Roses For Algernon
by OughtaKnowBetter
Summary: Post Season Three. Mutant X, on the run and desperate, meet up with an old friend and lots of mutant whumping ensues. It's complete!
1. Chapter 1

Roses for Algernon

By OughtaKnowBetter

Disclaimer: not mine, and in a bunch of years the copyright protection will run out and they won't belong to anyone else, either.

Notes: I've always wanted to do a post-season three story, but nothing until now seemed to work properly. This is a stand-alone semi-sequel to Flowers for Algernon's Grave, using some of the same characters that have been begging for another shot at Mutant X (again, as requested by some of you!). Let me know if it sounds interesting, and if I should continue…

* * *

The big rig hurtled down the highway, twenty tons of metal and rubber leaving the speed limit in the dust. The immense box that it hauled bore some collection of unimportant letters indicating that _someone_, _somewhere_, desired a great deal of _something_ to be delivered elsewhere for an undisclosed and undoubtedly outrageous price. The cab to the truck itself was somewhat larger than usual, designed for many days of continuous usage and capable of carrying more than a simple driver and spare, and was covered in dust that was rapidly being rattled loose by the excessive velocity.

But not one of the people inside said truck cab was attempting to slow the driver's technique.

The truck driver himself kept his attention on the road, trying to coax additional speed out of the engine built for its hauling power rather than rapid transit, making instantaneous decisions about whether to dodge the bumps in the road or to simply bull through and trust that the weight of the truck would flatten anything in its path. Neither option was truly acceptable; the secondary goal was to minimize trauma for a certain occupant in the far back of the cab.

His co-pilot hunched over a map, barely stifling her anger over what the hapless piece of paper was telling her. She irritably pushed long dark hair back over her ear to get it out of the way. "Don't these people believe in health care? Thismap says the nearest hospital is over one hundred miles away in every direction."

The driver flicked a worried gaze, trying for over his shoulder at the back of the cab but only reaching as far as the woman on the seat next to him. "How far?" Terse. Scared.

Lexa Pierce too glanced back into the interior of the cab. She could see what Brennan Mulwray couldn't spare the turning power for: Shalimar Fox lying on the miniscule excuse for a bed, eyes closed, skin pale—and face scrunched up in pain.

But not a sound did she make.

True feral to the core, she bore the agony in stoic fashion, refusing to let more than a tiny whimper escape even when the truck failed to turn a tarmac lump into a tarmac pancake. Sweat bedraggled her hair, and she clutched at her midriff in a mute appeal for relief, but not a sound did she utter. Not one complaint.

Jesse Kilmartin did that for her. He stroked her forehead, trying for the only comfort he had to offer. "Any faster, Brennan?"

"I've already got the pedal to the metal." It wasn't funny, wasn't meant to be a joke. "This thing won't go any faster. How is she?"

"Doing better," Jesse lied, knowing that everyone else knew that he lied—including Shalimar. "I think her fever is down." _Lie_. "She's feeling better, too. Right, Shal?"

"Right," she gasped, biting her lip as the truck hurtled over yet another bump. Jesse wiped her face with a rag, removing the drop of blood that she'd accidentally brought forth when clamping down. "What's that?"

"What's what?" Lexa looked back, trying to figure out what Shalimar meant.

"That noise." Shalimar closed her eyes. "Machinery. An engine."

"Not the truck." That was obvious. But, even sick as Shalimar was, Lexa wasn't about to doubt the feral's hearing.

"Chopper."

Lexa craned her head around, trying to see upward out of the truck's cab. Then she heard it as well, echo-located, found it in the sky. "Shal's right. Bogie at two o'clock." She started to unlock her seat belt. Photons danced around her fingers. "I'll get it."

"No. Wait, Lexa," Jesse said. "The speed we're going, it could be the state troopers trying to keep us from turning the armadillos into roadkill. Hold off."

"Why? After this run, they'll want us just as badly as the remnants of the Dominion. And I have no intention of spending the rest of my existence in some meager excuse for a jail in the middle of Midwestern nowhere, Jesse. We need to get Shal to a doctor right now."

"If it's the police," Jesse replied evenly, "they'll be able to transport Shal faster." He jerked his thumb upward. "Check 'em out, Lexa. Maybe they can play ambulance."

"It's not the state troopers," Brennan said, looking in his mirrors, not letting up on the gas. "It's a chopper, and it's unmarked. If it were the highway patrol they'd have cars coming up our ass. Their patrol cars are a lot faster than we are. You think it's what's left of the Dominion?"

"Moot point," Lexa said. "They've dropped back behind us. I can't see the chopper, can't shoot it down if I can't see it. They're behind us, hiding behind the box we're hauling. I need to get up on top of the cab to take it out."

"That's my cue." Jesse rose from Shalimar's side. "Madam asked for assistance?"

"I'm going with you," Shalimar butted in, trying to get up, only to sink back down when her insides objected in no uncertain terms.

Worry etched Jesse's face. "It's okay, Shal. We've got it covered. Stay here for now."

"Jess—"

"Shal."

"Oh, all right," she grumbled, as relieved as anyone and still scared. Jesse watched his 'big sister' a moment longer to make sure that she'd stay down, then clambered forward in the cab to join the other two.

"I'll keep the truck steady," Brennan said. "Still no sign of the cops. Whoever it is up top, they're not here to ask the time of day. Take 'em out, guys."

"Let's move, Jesse. They're coming in fast."

_Thump_. From the box they were hauling.

"'The Eagle has landed'," Jesse murmured. "Stay behind me, Lexa. Good chance they'll be armed."

"Good. Then I won't feel as guilty when I blast them."

Jesse's smile didn't quite reach his face; there was too much at stake. Sanctuary was gone, Adam gone, the Helix gone. Nothing left but the four of them here, on the run and desperate. More desperate now—Shalimar was ill. Expiry date? Jesse hoped not. If it was, all the medical care in the world wouldn't be good enough. Adam himself hadn't been good enough, though Jesse had no doubt that the man, wherever he was, was still doing his best to work on the problem.

_Don't get distracted, Kilmartin_. Jesse exhaled, phasing himself and Lexa insubstantial to pass through the metal cab of the truck onto the roof. A rapid shift—difficult, but not impossible—and he turned himself to a shield too dense for any bullet to penetrate. Would it be enough? What weapons would this unknown assailant have brought? If it was the Dominion, photon couplers would mow him down and Lexa would be left unprotected. Wind hurtled past his face, Lexa clinging to his back to keep from being swept off the top of the cab.

The chopper had settled on the trailer box being towed at breakneck speed, listing in the gale-force winds of speed. Two men clambered out, guns in their grasp. Lexa summoned the laser beams in her fingers that would sear them into oblivion. She aimed.

"No!" Jesse suddenly yelled, knocking her blast skyward.

Lexa yelped. "Jesse—!"

But Jesse had moved on, carefully, clinging to the truck against the wind. "Ben?"

"Jesse?" One of the men, the big one—make that _huge!_—lowered his weapon. "Really you?"

"Yeah, me. What're you doing, man? Why're you here?"

"You know this guy?" Lexa was still ready. Just because Jesse knew the giant who had dropped onto their truck unannounced didn't mean that the remnants of Mutant X wasn't still in deep trouble. Lexa knew plenty of people who would like to see her fried to a crisp whether or not the Dominion was intact.

"Yes," Jesse shouted back against the wind. "Helped him out a couple of years ago. Before your time, Lexa."

Lexa just looked at Jesse. _Do you trust him?_

_Maybe_.

"We've got to talk," Ben yelled, hoping the wind wouldn't rip away his words. "Stop the truck."

"Can't," Jess shouted. "Shalimar's sick. Need to get her to a doctor."

And Ben's mother was Dr. Beatrice Sutter, medical physician and expert geneticist, good enough to have worked at Adam's side. A whole _hell_ of a lot better option than the local community hospital where you wondered which doctor slept through what lecture. With the expiry date hanging over their heads there was still a lot of trouble to work through, but _something_ was better than _nothing_.

"Stop the truck," Ben repeated at the top of his lungs. "Load her aboard. We'll get her to help. We'll take her to Mother." Then he looked serious. "But, Jesse, there'll be a price."

Jesse didn't even need to consult any of the others. "We'll pay it."


	2. Roses 2

Things moved entirely too fast after that, and Lexa was quite certain that she didn't like it. Not that she had seemed to have any choice in the matter: Ben summoned more help from somewhere, two brawny men who took the truck off of Mutant X's hands with instructions to pretend to be Brennan and a spare driver and deliver the load to its intended destination. "My reputation as a trucker is intact," Brennan muttered sardonically. "My career is secure."

The chopper, with Ben at the controls, ferried all four of them as well as Ben and his companion, back to home base. Lexa waited as patiently as she could for a private moment with either Jesse or Brennan as to just who the hell their rescuers were and if Mutant X was getting themselves into greater trouble than before. Trust did not come easily to Lexa Pierce, and trusting this giant of a man and his quiet companion seemed like an exercise in foolishness. She intended to discuss this minor point in detail at her first opportunity, but shouting over the racket of a chopper didn't qualify as an opportunity and certainly not within earshot of Ben Sutter.

The landing pad was a small square outside a large brick building more suited to a research facility than any living quarters but Ben set them down gently without so much as a backward glance. "I radioed ahead. Mother is waiting. You got her, Brennan?"

"I've got her." Brennan gathered Shalimar up in his arms, lifting the tiny woman easily, terror written large on his face. Shalimar clung to him, finally giving in to the inevitable: she was dying. The agony in her gut was overwhelming, and Brennan couldn't look her in the eye for fear that the feral would take her last breath. _I've just found you; I can't let you go. Not yet. I can't! I can't! _"Let's go."

Evidence of money was everywhere, in the marble tiled hall that they crossed that Brennan barely noticed with Shalimar in his arms, in the quantity of guards armed with discrete but deadly guns in holsters to the expensively coiffed—and therefore expensively paid—receptionist at the front desk who didn't do more than look with mild interest at the group rushing past her. Ben's presence smoothed the way, despite their wild appearance. _That_ Lexa noticed.

"This way." Ben hustled them into an elevator, pressing one of the lowest buttons. Brennan willed the box to move faster. Shalimar had gone pale, barely able to look at him, her eyelids closing of their own volition. Brennan was scared. They piled out into a long corridor, rushing down to Ben's directions toward a room that reeked of antiseptic—and health care.

Dr. Beatrice Sutter looked much as she had two years ago to Brennan and Jesse, but better. No longer on the run, she now had time for such mundane activities as regular meals and a shower more than once a month. Even the gray had been removed from her hair, making her seem younger than she had when they'd first met her. But still the same was the gleam of intelligence, the need to decipher the secrets of the universe that they had all seen so often in Adam Kane. Dr. Sutter might not be on Adam's level, but she came damn close.

Brennan wasted no time in depositing Shalimar onto the waiting stretcher, cringing at the small whimper that even that little jolt eked out. "Doc?"

"Let me look." Dr. Sutter moved in, stethoscope in hand, competence in every gesture. "Here?"

Shalimar came alive, crying out in pain at the touch.

"I'll take that as a yes," Dr. Sutter muttered. "Ben, tell my staff that I need a complete profile and a flat plate of the abdomen, stat. Oh, and tell the OR team to scrub. We'll start as soon as the results are back."

"Surgery?" Lexa asked suspiciously. Who was this woman that the others accepted so easily?

Dr. Sutter favored her with an amused glance. "Well, yes, in this case I suspect it's indicated." She nodded at the distraught blonde on the stretcher. "This amount of discomfort, I'm hoping that her appendix hasn't ruptured." The corner of her mouth quirked up. "Just because Shalimar is a mutant doesn't mean that she's immune to regular diseases that we normal types get."

* * *

Lexa finished her scan of the Great Room where Ben had put them to wait for the outcome of the surgery. As a waiting area, it far outdid any hospital waiting room she'd ever been in but the mutant still wasn't satisfied. She ignored the heavy damask furniture, the velvet curtains that muffled the daylight outside, and the grand piano in one corner of the room. The vaulted ceiling did get her attention: there were three listening devices that she put out of operation with a short burst of photons, blistering them into seared blobs of metal and plastic, and she hoped that she'd gotten all of them. If there were three, there could be more and likely was but she couldn't wait any longer to scope out the rest of their situation. "Okay, guys. Give."

Jesse didn't pretend not to know what she was talking about. "Beatrice and Ben Sutter. We met them about one or two years ago, helped them out. Ben used to be a moron."

"Okay, so Mountain Man used to be a jerk. How does that play into the situation?"

"No, I mean he was really a moron," Jesse repeated patiently. "Mentally retarded. Benjamin Sutter had the mind of a four year old. As in, he couldn't tie his shoelaces without help. Just barely toilet-trained, which made going anywhere public a real challenge."

That did not square with the well-spoken man Lexa had met on the roof of the truck, and she said so.

"Like I said, we helped them out," Jesse started to repeat, when Brennan interrupted.

"What he means, Lexa, is that Ben Sutter is a product of a Genomex experiment gone wrong. They were going for a super-soldier; someone big, strong, and fast. Unfortunately for them but fortunately for the world, the results were a giant idiot. Ben was everything they wanted physically but mentally there was no one home. Ben's mother was a Genomex researcher who escaped Genomex's clutches and continued her research to restore her son's mind."

"Obviously she succeeded. And Adam helped."

"And Adam helped," Brennan agreed, "along with our own little Jesse here. The missing ingredient to the cure for Ben was a sample of molecular spinal fluid to stabilize the solution. Not our finest hour; Genomex tried to repossess their property right after Ben achieved genius status."

"Evidently they didn't."

"Nope," Jesse put in. "Dr. Sutter and Ben went into the Underground, and none of us have heard from them since. I always wondered where they'd ended up." He jerked his thumb at the luxurious surroundings. "I'd say that they did better for themselves than we did."

"A field mouse with a hawk overhead is better off than we are," Lexa groused. "So who's the sugar Daddy with the chopper? Unless you want to tell me that Sutter & Sutter won the lottery and stayed under the radar to buy this place as a coming out present for your friend Benjamin."

"Good question," Brennan shrugged. "Right now I'm just grateful that he happened along."

"And that all Shalimar had was appendicitis," Lexa added. "At least that's something that can be cured. Unlike an expiry date."

That statement trailed off into an awkward silence, each mutant inwardly contemplating their impending fate. The world was not a particularly good place to be at this point.

Ben came into the room, carrying a tray with coffee and edibles on it. He stopped to sniff at the vase of white and pink roses sending tender tendrils of scent into the room from their position on the side table by the door, then set the tray down. He looked a good deal more civilized at the moment than the super-soldier landing on the back of Brennan's rig; a shower and a change of clothing had turned him into something significantly less threatening-looking. Lexa promised herself not to be taken in.

Ben straightened up from depositing the tray with edibles on the table. "We've got some catching up to do, guys. And before you ask, Mother still has Shalimar in surgery but one of her staff popped out to say that it's going well. They should be done within the hour, and Mother will probably let you see Shalimar shortly after that." He dropped onto one of the over-stuffed sofas, draping his arms over the back, first snagging a pastry and taking a nibble that would qualify as a mouthful for a smaller person but didn't come close for the nearly seven foot giant. "I heard that you and the Dominion had a dust up. Sounded pretty nasty. I was sorry to hear about Sanctuary, and I lost track of what happened after that. I presume you guys wanted it that way, keeping a low profile. So, what's your history for the last few months?"

"Short on our end," Brennan told him. "Running, hiding, keeping under the radar from theremnants of the Dominion and associated clubs that want a piece of our genes, and I'm not talking designer denim. You? This looks pretty comfy, man. You own this?"

"Not hardly. We're paid employees, Mother and I. We were lucky," Ben acknowledged. "Mother set up a clinic in a small town not too far from here, started a private practice again treating colds and flu and runny noses to pay the bills."

"And during this time you—?" Lexa asked.

Ben smiled. "After twenty years of stupidity, I figured it was time to get an education. After devouring everything Mother could get for me, I decided to go to the university to study." He smirked. "I told them I was home-schooled. True, as far as it went, if a little shy on the time line. Acing the entrance exams didn't hurt."

"So what are you studying?" Lexa asked waspishly. "Ballistics? Nuclear physics and how to make things go boom?"

"Well…not exactly."

"What, _exactly_?" Lexa put the same emphasis on the word.

Ben shrugged sheepishly. "Would you believe English Lit?"

"No," Lexa said flatly.

"Well, I am," Ben said defensively. "Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Dickens, the early classics. I never had a chance to enjoy those things when I was younger. I was too busy making castles in my sandbox. All right, all right, I'm minoring in ballistics," he added grumpily, "just in case. And the damn ROTC cadets won't get off my case."

Lexa stared. "Life is tough when you're built like a tank."

"Literally," Ben agreed. "Everyone I meet keeps wanting to recruit me into some force or another. I'd really rather just study Sir Walter Scott. And they've got this really neat-sounding non-credit course on flower arranging…" he trailed off.

Lexa chose to take that at face value for the time being. "And all this?" She waved her hand to take in their opulent surroundings.

"This." Ben glanced around, picked up another pastry off of the silver tray that he'd brought in. He bought himself a moment to collect his thoughts by taking a small bite that demolished half of the confection. "This belongs to Dr. Abner Windom."

"And that means—?" Brennan let it hang in the air.

But Lexa knew, and reacted. "_The_ Abner Windom, the one who discovered the initial stabilization techniques for monophasic moleculars with univariate genetic structures?"

"Yeah." Ben took another bite of his pastry and polished it off. He reached for another.

Brennan stared. "Did you just say what I thought you said, Lexa? I didn't think anyone could talk like that except for Adam."

"What? I can't know a little science?"

"So what is an initializing whatever it was you said?"

Lexa shrugged. "I speak it, I don't understand it. But believe me, Dr. Windom is on the Dominion's Most Wanted List, just a few names down from Adam himself. Another rogue scientist, according to them. I'll bet _he_ wasn't overly unhappy when the Dominion went boom," she said to Ben.

"Won't say that he did a Happy Dance, but he did crack a smile," Ben allowed. He waved his hand in the air, indicating the luxurious and well-guarded surroundings. "They were a big part of why all of this, the guards, the security and stuff. He and the Dominion just went for a little truce toward the end. He didn't intrude on their stuff, and they let him alone. It worked, for the most part." He polished off the pastry and grabbed another. Jesse snatched his own second helping, since it looked like Ben was capable of scarfing down the entire lot. Ben continued, "Dr. Windom heard that Mother was practicing in the area, and invited her to come work for him. She agreed, on the condition that I be allowed to continue school. So here we are."

"Pretty lucky for you," Lexa said. "Windom must value Dr. Sutter pretty highly to pay for a college education."

"Oh, I help out here and there," Ben said. "I make my own way, and Dr. Windom hasn't had any reason to regret the bargain. Every now and again there's some task that needs a little muscle. I mean, just because I want an education doesn't mean that I have to forget all the martial arts training I did."

"Wouldn't want that," Brennan grunted, remembering the first time he'd sparred against 'Benji'. Benji, with the mind of a four year old, hadn't wanted to spar. Hadn't wanted to hurt anyone, 'cause his mommy told him not to. Then Brennan teased him onto the mat, tossed a bell-ringer that caused 'mommy's' admonition to fly out of the kid's mind, and Brennan ended up flat on his back with concussion. _Oh, yeah_, but Brennan remembered that.

Ben's face lit up. "Spar with me, Brennan? Most of the guys around here aren't any challenge. I have to go too easy."

The smile froze on Brennan's face. "Let's see how Shalimar makes out first," he temporized.

"Which brings us back to another problem," Jesse changed the subject. "When you picked us up, you talked about a price. Name it, Ben. We owe you Shalimar's life."

Ben hesitated. "It's not going to be easy."

Lexa began to get a bad feeling.

"I need help," Ben confessed.

The bad feeling turned into ice cubes in Lexa's stomach.

"I nearly flunked English in high school," Brennan warned him. "Trust me on this; you don't want me editing your term papers. I can screw up Spell Check."

That drew a small smile. "No, that I can handle. Although one of my other courses is a basic computer science class. Anybody able to tutor me in that? Both Mother and Dr. Windom are so far out of my league that they can't come down out of the skies to help."

"The Geek Wonder over here will do it," Lexa volunteered her team mate. "Jesse got us into this, he can do the tutoring. In fact, I'll get him into the hall to take your final for you. Is that all?"

"Uh…"

"In other words, no." Lexa put an end to the dithering. "Spit it out, Sutter. What do you need us to do?"

Ben squirmed, and Jesse was reminded of the man with the four year old's mind that he had originally met. "I, uh, need you to help me rescue someone. A girl. Dr. Windom's daughter."

More bad feelings in the pit ofLexa's stomach. The ice cubes mutated into dry ice. "And just why does she need rescuing? A runaway teenager, angry over not getting a raise in her allowance?"

Safer ground. They could see Ben relax. "She's a mutant, guys."

"Dominion take her? Genomex is long gone."

"No," Ben admitted, "it was the competition. A man named Hector Arrigo."

Lexa groaned. "Not more univariate mono-molecular stabilization."

Jesse leaned over to Brennan and dryly translated: "another mad scientist type."

"Thanks, bro. It was tough figuring that out."

"Actually," Ben said wryly, "we don't know what Dr. Arrigo is working on right now. Yes, we thought it was something to do with moleculars," and the former idiot didn't attempt to spit out the scientific gibberish that spilled off of Lexa's tongue so glibly, "but Dr. Windom's daughter is not a molecular."

"But she is a mutant." Brennan pounced on the end of the statement.

Ben nodded. "She's an empath." He collected himself. "She was taken two days ago. I led an assault team against Arrigo's stronghold and I'm ashamed to say that we got our collective butt kicked. It was me and a half dozen of Dr. Windom's finest. We weren't good enough."

"What happened?"

"We didn't even get past the front gate. We tried a frontal assault; they beat us back. We didn't get close to where they're keeping Amanda and I almost lost three men. I need help," Ben repeated. "Expert mutant help."

"We're in," Jesse said, then, "what?" as Lexa flung him a glare. "This is the price, Lexa. Shalimar is getting the finest of care right now because of Ben and Dr. Sutter. Even Adam said that Dr. Sutter was a good doctor. We're lucky Ben found us."

"Arrigo's security is not easy to get past," was Lexa's response. "I've never had the pleasure, but I've met a few survivors who have. They've declined a second crack at him."

"They haven't been mutants," Ben said immediately. "My mistake was not using mutants, mostly because my supply is limited. There's just me—and all I've got is an over-sized physique—and there's Dr. Windom's son, Treo."

"Treo?"

"Justin, actually, but Treo is his nickname."

"And this Treo is a mutant."

"A molecular, of sorts." Ben glanced around as if the son was about to show up. "Remember him? He was my co-pilot on the chopper. I'll let him introduce himself later. For now, let me show you the layout of Arrigo's stronghold. We'll plan to go as soon as it gets dark. Shalimar will be out of surgery by then; you'll see that she's all right with Mother, and we'll head out. Plan?"

"Plan," the others echoed.

But Lexa kept wondering why she still had that uneasy feeling in her stomach that had nothing to do with the pastry she'd just eaten.


	3. Roses 3

It wasn't pain, Shalimar decided. There was something preventing her from springing up out of bed as she usually did in the morning, but it wasn't the agony that she remembered from just a little while ago. Her limbs felt like Jesse had turned them diamond-hard while she wasn't looking, and opening her eyes was truly beyond her capabilities. Most frustrating. She growled under her breath.

"She's waking up."

Shalimar knew that voice, identified it as belonging to the large hand that currently engulfed her own small one: Brennan. The man she loved. The man she'd always loved, but had refused to acknowledge that feeling until almost too late. Then Sanctuary had been blown up, and they'd had to put any further actions on hold until it was safe to indulge those feelings.

But that didn't mean that the hunger wasn't there. Shalimar felt better just knowing that Brennan was at her side. _Safe_.

Little bits and pieces came floating back to her: the fire in her belly. The chopper coming in for a landing on top of the truck and Jesse and Lexa going out to give the crew a warmer welcome than any they'd ever had. Brennan lifting her up in strong arms, and then the rest dissolved into a blur of anesthesia.

Damn. Bandage on her belly. Surgery. Shalimar really hoped that the empty feeling inside meant that someone had taken out the ouchy part.

"Shalimar?" The large hand caressed her forehead, pushing back the hair that tried to droop into her eyes. Shalimar tried to say something positive, but it came out as a groan.

"It's okay, Shalimar. You're safe. We're among friends."

Brennan wouldn't say that unless it was true. Shalimar sighed deeply, and allowed herself to drift back off to sleep.

* * *

Combat planning had begun in earnest, the group huddled around an overlarge mahogany table. The velvet curtains remained closed against anyone trying to see in and spy on their plans. Ben had scrounged black clothing for all of them, adding black knit caps to tuck hair under, and they made a somber group as they readied themselves for action. Ben spread a large map out on the table for them to look at, Brennan reaching to smooth the corners. The elemental looked around the room.

"Where's this Treo guy?" Brennan asked. "He should be in on this. And, no offense, Ben, but I like to know how good a guy is that I have at my back. This Treo have any training?"

"He's coming," Ben said absently, concentrating on the paper under his hand. "This is the Arrigo complex. Believe me, this info is fresh; I picked a lot of it up a couple of days ago when we got our wrists slapped by Arrigo's men. Some of the defenses are pretty straightforward: there's a brick wall around the perimeter with an electric wire barrier on top to fry any would-be intruder who thinks they can climb over. Brennan?"

"No sweat. I can take it down. Next?"

"Next is this expanse of open territory." Ben indicated a quarter mile radius around the building. The map suggested that it contained bushes, trees, and someone with a warped sense of humor had drawn a crude picture of a squirrel with a nut. "This area is dotted with men with rifles. Rifles with scopes. They're pretty good with them, as we found out. Aaron will be out for the next two weeks."

"You can't hit what you can't see," was Lexa's response. "Next?"

"The building itself has only two stories, but many rooms to be searched. You can see on this map that I've already sketched in five wings. That's where Treo comes in."

"And that's my cue for an entrance." A young man, blond and pale, sauntered into the room accompanied by an older silver-haired man who looked substantially like him. The young man couldn't have been more than eighteen and had lived a life of luxury. His clothes were high quality, his hair neatly cut before falling over his face, and his mouth pulled down in what looked like a perpetual frown. The older man was three inches shorter but with the same frown. Piercing eyes of intelligence and drive peered out of sharp features. Father and son, Brennan surmised, Windom senior and junior. Windom senior was perusing Mutant X just as much as Mutant X was watching the pair. But Brennan got a funny feeling; Mutant X was concentrating on Treo as the next member of the rescue mission but Windom senior had eyes only for Jesse. Why? Brennan couldn't figure that one out. Maybe Jesse reminded him of someone?

The younger man spoke. "Justin Windom. Treo, to my friends. And my father."

Abner Windom extended his hand to be shaken. "A pleasure to meet you all. I've heard a great deal about each of you. I'm lucky that you happened to be in the area."

"We're the lucky ones," Brennan replied. "I understand you assisted in Shalimar's surgery. We're grateful."

"Yes, we got to her in time. Another hour, and the appendix would have ruptured. That would have been bad." Windom senior turned to Ben. "You're ready, Sutter?"

"Yes, sir. Just going over final details. Treo, you understand your part in this?"

"Not a problem, Ben. Just get me inside. I'll do the rest."

"I don't understand." Jesse held them back. "Treo, Ben tells me you're a molecular. What can you do that I can't?"

"As in, why are we both going?" Treo held no animosity. "You're Jesse Kilmartin, right? Ben told me about you, that you can phase or you can mass out. I'm a little different; for while no one was sure whether to classify me as a water elemental or a molecular. I've got three phases, not just two."

"Three phases? What three phases?"

"Solid," and Treo suddenly turned to ice. "Liquid," and he turned to something approaching water to slosh over the carpet, "and gas," floated out of the sloshing being as it steamed up into a minor cloud to sail around the room. Treo abruptly re-materialized into normal. "I can seep through half a dozen doors at the same time to search for Mandi. Can you do that?"

Jesse had to admit that he couldn't. Treo was in.

* * *

On closer inspection, Arrigo's stronghold held a number of similarities to that of the Windom facility. Both had extensive security and guards, the obligatory high concrete wall to keep unwanted visitors out and desirable prisoners in, and both facilities were high tech. Jesse could appreciate that. Up until recently he had had his own high tech secure living space.

But Sanctuary was history, blown to dust along with everything he'd ever owned. Even the comm. links that they still wore were worthless without Sanctuary's computers to transmit one signal to the other. The only things that Jesse Kilmartin had besides his good name were the clothes on his back and the friendship of the other three. _Not a heck of a lot to show for so many years of sacrifice. Was it worth it? Let's not go there, not right now. There's a mission to accomplish. Philosophy can wait. _

Ben boosted Brennan up along the concrete wall. The bricks were tall, over both heads, but sitting on top of Ben's massive shoulders Brennan could reach the wiring that danced along the top carrying enough electrical current to fry anything foolish enough to touch. Ben widened his stance for stability, and Brennan reached.

The wiring sputtered, trying to go for the sizzle. Brennan hung on, grinning, excess sparks flying out of the wires. "That's enough," he finally whispered, almost a giggle in his voice. "No problems here."

"Brennan?" The elemental sounded strange to Lexa.

"Just a little…high," Brennan slurred. "It's okay. It's safe."

"You're drunk."

"Lil' too much juice," Brennan agreed sloppily. "Need to ground off somewhere."

"Not yet," Ben ordered. "Remember the plan. As soon as we get through the wall, take Brennan to the site where Arrigo's men will be expecting an assault. Lexa, you and Brennan will draw them away from us, away from the building. The three of us will get Mandi out. Clear?"

"Clear." Ben was sounding damn smart for a man who up until a couple of years ago had the mind of a four year old, Lexa thought. She took Brennan by the arm, wincing at the static electricity that jumped from his arm to hers, and slipped through the suddenly insubstantial wall that Jesse had created in the massive bricks. She gave the molecular a warning look. "You be careful, hear?"

"Me? You've got the tough part, Lexa. You've got people shooting at you. You two be careful. I need you both back in one piece." Jesse took her hand and squeezed it, trying to put a world of emotion intohis gesture. Not a kiss, but close enough. Lexa didn't get close easily. It would have to do.

_Yeah, but you're with two mutants that I didn't know existed less than twenty-four hours ago. I don't like that_. Lexa turned and walked away, dragging Brennan with her. And a moment later the two faded from plain sight as Lexa exerted her own gifts to turn them invisible.

Jesse turned back to the pair. "Well, that's that. One diversion on its way. Shall we go pick up our date?"

Ben extended his hand. "After you, Mr. Kilmartin."

"No, I insist. After you, Mr. Sutter."

"How about we split the difference?" Ben turned to Treo. "Go get 'em, ghost boy."

"Thought you'd never ask." Grinning, Treo turned himself into a steam bath and wafted off toward the building, scouting the way for any bogies that might impede their progress. It was the perfect disguise; who would expect to get whacked by a fog bank?

* * *

"This the place?"

"Hush. Keep it down, Brennan. You want them to know we're here?"

"Well, yeah! Isn't that the point of being a diversion? Dammit, Lexa, I really have to let loose here! Hurry it up!"

"Over there." Lexa could tell that she wasn't going to be able to keep the elemental under wraps much longer. They'd dodged two patrols with invisibility, but it was rapidly approaching the zero hour. Brennan himself was losing control, dancing around with suppressed energy like a three year old toddler who desperately needed to use grown up facilities. "All right. It's time. See that electrical transformer over there? Take it out."

"Finally." No warm up. No gyrations. No arms windmilling. Just a flat out bolt of lightning.

The transformer blew. Not only did it blow and take out the lights, but with the juice that Brennan gratefully got rid of, the entire structure shattered into tiny pieces of shrapnel. Lexa and Brennan dropped to the ground, covering their heads with their hands, trying to protect themselves from the danger. The area slowly burned down, the flames dying into the night.

Lexa levered herself up to glare at Brennan. "Think that might have been a little bit of overkill, Sparky?"

* * *

Jesse let the trio into the building through the wall, turning the solid bricks into the consistency of warm gelatin and checking the interior before they entered. Hand signals went into effect: the lights were out, courtesy of a certain elemental blowing up a certain transformer, and a couple pairs of night vision goggles went on. Treo didn't need any, Jesse had learned; he perceived things differently in his gaseous state.

The search for Amanda Windom began. Treo searched one side of the corridor, his gaseous state allowing him to float freely through the infinitesimal cracks around the door, able to stretch himself to cover six rooms at a time. He oozed down the corridor, swiftly searching each one with the speed of, well, of dissipating gas. "Brownian movement with an attitude," Jesse muttered.

Jesse and Ben took the other side of the corridor. Ben, as a super-soldier, possessed superior hearing. He was able to ascertain if there was any breathing behind the door. If there was, a single jolt with a massive shoulder was enough to jar the door loose. He would stick his head in, locate the presence and identity of the occupant(s), and take whatever action seemed appropriate to the situation. Usually that action involved a mild case of concussion.

Jesse was the slowest. It took a moment to exhale, stick his head in, and identify the personnel in each room. The men he could rule out but the women required a second look to make certain that it wasn't Amanda. Jesse only had a picture to go by, a picture of a young girl with dancing red curls. _Pretty enough to attract Brennan_, Jesse thought, _if he weren't already hooked up with Shalimar_. The elemental was plenty popular, and there would be a number of broken hearts if they ever came across Brennan again. But the elemental was a changed man. There was a woman that he was now committed to, one who was sleeping off a close call back at the Windom facility. Any old flame would be in for a surprise. _Fat chance._ _Not in this lifetime. Assuming this lifetime has a lifeline._

_Concentrate, Kilmartin_. Jesse peered at the sleeping body on the cot across the room, determined that it was a man, although a small one, and withdrew.

"This level's clear," Treo hissed, reverting to his normal state to speak. "She's not here."

"And it seems to be mostly labs. No living quarters," Ben added, a look of swift calculation on his face. "Look, I say we head straight upstairs. Maybe there'll be living quarters up there where they've got her. Plan?"

"Plan," Treo echoed. Jesse nodded in agreement. They knew Arrigo's personality, Jesse didn't. He'd follow their lead.

The second floor was looking better. These rooms were clearly living quarters. Like Windom, the security staff and the lower level researchers of Hector Arrigo were expected to live on site and devote 99 of their waking hours to the goals at hand with perhaps an hour or two per year devoted to personal pursuits. More heads got quietly thumped into unconsciousness so that Arrigo's staff wouldn't interfere with the mission. It meant slower going, but progress was made.

Jesse was the one to hit the jackpot. As he'd already done more than fifty times that night, he exhaled and stuck his low density head through the wall to check out the insides.

It wasn't a pleasant sight. By now, after looking at the photo more than fifty times, it was easy to identify the girl in the room as Amanda Windom. The red curls were a dead giveaway, the green eyes and the uptilted nose only confirming his suspicion. What the photo hadn't shown was the slender waist, the delicate hands, the bust swelling from adolescence into adulthood: a package to uplift any normal male on the spot. That was the gratifying part of the scenario.

The less than pleasant part was the position that the girl found herself in. A man that Jesse was able to identify as Dr. Hector Arrigo, again from an oft-viewed photo, held her firmly in his grasp and was busily engaged in removing her clothing without benefit of unzipping the zippers, unbuttoning the buttons, or even unsnapping any snaps. Seam-ripping through sheer force however, was acceptable to the geneticist physician. Also acceptable, apparently, was the assistance of two other men that Jesse could only characterize as apes. Both were large, almost as large as Ben, and both were holding the girl down so that Arrigo could ravish her.

"Stop it! Stop it! Hector, stop it! Hector, you're hurting me!"

Step one: summon assistance. "Guys! In here! Now!" Despite the fact that Jesse felt quite capable of resolving the situation in Amanda's favor by himself—rage was a terrible thing to waste—he suspected that both Treo, as the outraged brother, and Ben, as the equally outraged team leader, would take it amiss if Jesse were to hog all the fun to himself.

Step two: begin counter-measures. Jesse crossed the room in three swift steps, ripped Arrigo away from his clothing-ripping activity, turned his own arm as solid as he could make it, and made it clear to Dr. Arrigo that his attentions to Ms. Windom were unwanted. And also that the young lady had informed the good doctor that his intentions were unwanted, and that Mr. Kilmartin was there to aid in the good doctor's comprehension of that fact. Usually when Jesse was taking down an opponent he would aim for the chest, above the waist; Marquis of Queensbury rules, playing straight, take the honorable action, that sort of thing. This time Jesse aimed a good deal lower. _Seems only right, given what Arrigo was trying to do._

Ben slammed through the door, Treo in his wake. It took less than a millisecond for each to understand what had almost happened, and the other part of millisecond to ensure that the rest of the combatants were in no condition to object to the escape of their victim. Mandi clung to Ben, tears flowing down her face. Even that did nothing to mar her beauty; who would have thought that smeared mascara could look lovely?

Ben enfolded her into his arms protectively, although his training still shown through: he kept scanning the area for additional threats. _Damn_, Jesse thought, _he's in love with her! _And wondered at the longing in himself. _Was it just the girl? Down boy; Amanda Windom is an empath. She must be broadcasting. Ben is reacting to her. And so am I._ _Damn, but she's hot!_

He cleared his throat roughly. "We need to get out of here, meet up with Brennan and Lexa."

Ben went back to being team leader in a flash. "You're right. Let's move out." He spared an angry look for the scientist out cold on the floor. "I wish we could do something more."

"No time," Treo said. "Not his fault. Let's get out of here before they catch on."

"Too late," Jesse said, peering out through the shattered doorway. "They're at either end of the hall. I think I saw a lot of guns." He grinned, no humor in it. "I can cover one side of us, but getting us out of here intact down the staircase is not going to happen. We've got more than one side."

"We need another route." Ben looked out through the window. "Too far down, and rocks below. One or more of us would break a leg. Yeah, I know, it won't be you, Treo. But if it's me, it'll take three of you to carry me which leaves nobody to do the fighting. Find another way."

Jesse pulled his head back in. A shot whizzed past, and he winced involuntarily. "How about straight down, to the floor below? Ten foot drop; can you manage it?"

Ben looked at Jesse, then at Mandi. "I can get her down. What—?"

"Center of the room. Fast." Jesse gathered them into a circle, took a deep breath, and exhaled.

The floor dissipated. The four of them sank through the formerly solid material to plop into the room below. Mandi would have fallen to her knees if Ben hadn't stabilized her. The floor above, now properly described as the ceiling, snapped back into reality.

"Good thing this room has a rug," was Ben's only observation. "Let's go." He grinned at Jesse. "You're coming in handy. How about a door?"

"Any time." Jesse crossed to the wall, exhaled, and created a path out into the night.


	4. Roses 4

"Think they've gotten the sister?" That last bullet had come awfully close, and Brennan was sure that the next hair cut he got would raise some eyebrows. Ben was right; those soldiers of Arrigo had damn good aim. He hunkered down below the height of the bushes, raising up only to zap one of the soldiers in the fanny. The man yelped and hit the dirt. And fired again, this time with more zeal. Brennan ducked hurriedly.

"Have they called to say they have?" Lexa returned waspishly, zinging off a blast of photons to remind the other side to keep their distance. The landscape whitened, then returned to darkness with only the moon and a few brave stars to lighten the view once vision had returned from seeing spots.

"Something might have happened. Maybe they couldn't find her."

"Maybe the place is bigger than it seems, and they're still searching, room by room. A little help over here? Before they overrun our position?" Another blast, another body flying. Brennan hastily fired up his own power source and sent lightning careening after Lexa's laser bolt.

"How many of these guys do they have?" Lexa complained. "It feels like we've been here for hours."

"Only twenty minutes." Brennan chanced a look at his watch, the luminescent hands glowing in the dark. It was an inexpensive mechanical model; the high quality quartz variety tended to sputter and die when exposed to high levels of electricity. Annoying, really.

"You better?"

"You mean, am I tapped out yet?" Brennan snapped his fingers. "Yes, the extra juice is gone. No, I am not tapped out, although I will be if they don't get back here soon. You want to call them?"

"And have the radio crackle when silence is called for? Not yet." Lexa blasted another guard who made the mistake of craning his head out from behind a tree to take aim. "We wait. Besides, aren't you having fun? Isn't this what you live for?"

Brennan only grunted. "Hope Shalimar's okay."

* * *

"They went without me."

Okay, so sitting up without falling over was about the only thing Shalimar Fox could accomplish at the moment. That didn't mean that she didn't very much want to be with her pack, doling out punches and blows, rescuing fair maidens—it was the rescuing part she liked, not the fair maidens—and generally being active. Beatrice Sutter smiled sympathetically and pulled the stethoscope out of her ears.

"Yes, they did, dear. There wasn't very much you could do. Your job is get well. You cut it very close, you know."

Shalimar sighed, and lay back against the pillow. "I hate being sick."

"Not much longer. As a feral, you'll heal very quickly. In fact," and Dr. Sutter pulled away at the dressing she'd applied some twelve hours ago, "yes, you're healing very fast. This already looks like a three day old incision. Another twenty four hours and it should be all but healed. You can wait twenty four hours," Dr. Sutter admonished her.

"No, I can't." Did Dr. Sutter have to sound so much like Adam? Shalimar felt a sharp pang that had nothing to do with the incision. _We'll find you, Adam_.

"Yes, you can," Dr. Sutter chuckled, handing over a glass of something cool. "Here, drink this. It will help to replenish your body, help you to heal even faster than you already are."

"It's too sweet," Shalimar complained.

"It's got medicine in it, to help you sleep," Dr. Sutter said. "When you wake up, they'll be back."

"I should be with them," Shalimar muttered petulantly. She closed her eyes. "I should be there."

* * *

It wasn't true, what was said: trees didn't all look alike. Jesse very quickly realized that they were headed in the wrong direction to meet Brennan and Lexa, and said so.

"It's okay," Treo said. "We've got some people over here. They'll help get Mandi home."

"What about Lexa and Brennan? We should call them, let them know that the mission is accomplished," Jesse said. "They need to get out of there. They'll be running low on juice." He raised his hand, the one with the radio in it.

Treo stopped him. "Not yet. Wait."

"Why?"

The answer came out of the trees: more of Windom's men, all dressed in dark camouflage gear. Jesse could see several small trucks beyond the trees, trucks that he had no doubt were filled with firepower of the more conventional kind. Dr. Windom himself came with them.

"Daddy!" Mandi flung herself at her father, sobbing. "Daddy, he was awful!"

"I know, pumpkin, I know," Windom soothed, caressing her hair. "But it's all over now. We've got you back. It's all going to be all right."

"Sir, we need to move," Ben reminded the older man, looking around nervously. "Arrigo's menwon't be far behind. And Brennan and Lexa are waiting."

Windom nodded. "Go. We'll handle the rest."

Ben turned to Jesse. "Jesse, I'm really sorry about this, but I have no choice."

"What?" Something didn't make sense.

But it was Treo who did the dirty work. Jesse's attention was fixed on Ben, alarm bells going off. Treo slipped up behind Ben, popped out and turned _aerosol_ into Jesse's face.

First it stung, then it choked. Whatever it was, whatever Treo was doing, it was awful. Jesse clawed at his face, trying to inhale, trying to breathe, only to pull in more of the chemical toxin that clogged his airway. Blackness wavered around the edges of his vision and finally jumped him altogether. Jesse collapsed into Ben's grasp, folding over without a fight.

Ben handed the unconscious body over to Windom's men. "Take good care of him. We need him." He glanced guiltily over at Mandi, already drying her tears. "You ready, Mandi? You can do your part?"

She nodded, still mascara-stained, looking once again to her father for reassurance and direction. The dark helped her to blend into her surroundings. "I'm ready. Daddy explained everything."

"We need to make this look real," Ben said. "I'll do it."

"Me," Treo interrupted, having re-materialized once he'd cold-cocked his fellow molecular. "It's only fair."

Ben shook his head. "They'll never believe it. You're a molecular; you can gas out and let a bullet slip through. It has to be Mandi or I, and we both know who is going to do it. I'm not going to let Mandi be an option."

"He's right, Justin," Windom said. "Ben, come to me as soon as you get back. I'll take care of you. We won't worry your mother with this part."

"Thank you, sir. I'll do that." Ben gathered the remnants of his little band: Treo and Amanda Windom but eyes followed the rest of Windom's men as they dumped Jesse into the back end of one of the trucks. The corners of his mouth turned down. "Let's go."

* * *

The radio crackled. "Brennan? Lexa?"

Lexa thumbed hers on. "Here. You got her?"

"Yes. Prepare to bug out in sixty seconds."

"Finale," Lexa told Brennan. "You ready?"

Brennan cracked his knuckles. "Let's do it."

Fireworks time. Brennan took careful aim at the other transformer that he'd been saving for this moment. He was certain that the enemy guards were wondering why he hadn't blasted it yet so far, and they were about to learn his grand scheme. The transformer was a big one, with a lot of circuits that would light up the sky like the Fourth of July and the Aurora Borealis rolled into one. He grinned. Blasting things that exploded was one of his more pleasant tasks in life.

_Boom!_ The transformer took off straight up, shooting flares in every color of the rainbow, showering everyone around with little sparks. Brennan smothered a laugh; the guards slapped at their clothing, trying to put out the meager flames, dancing through the bushes as if ants had crawled in and started biting.

Lexa was not to be outdone. _One! Two! Three! Four!_ Four light poles went up like Roman candles, each setting another line of defense on fire and toppling more light poles over like a row of dominoes.

The guards knew when to back off. They retreated to the relative safety of the building, firing backward but without their collective heart in it. The shots went wide. Brennan didn't need the invisibility that Lexa cast upon them both for an escape from the target area but under the circumstances he wasn't about to object to the overkill.

"Which way?"

"C'mon." Brennan didn't let go of the chromatic's hand, drawing her to the pick up point where they'd left the SUV. The vehicle would be a bit tight with six, but Brennan had wanted the power as well as the space for equipment. _Hadn't needed the equipment,_ he mused, _but 'Murphy's Law'. Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. If we hadn't brought equipment, we would have needed it_.

They got there first, and Brennan fired up the engine, satisfied with the hum of the engine turning over. "Where are they?"

"Maybe they took a wrong turn?" From anyone else, it would be a joke. From Lexa, it was sarcasm. _The woman was an expert at pessimism_, Brennan scowled. _Can't see what Jesse sees in her._

Which reminded him of Shalimar; never far from his thoughts. She had looked so tiny lying quietly in the bed, covers up under her chin like a little girl. Awake, she filled the room. Asleep was when he realized just how small she really was. First thing back, he'd check in on her. Windom's place seemed like a great spot to hang out, mutant-friendly and such, but Brennan had lived too long on the street and seen too much back-stabbing to be comfortable anywhere that he didn't know extremely well. However: mission accomplished. Some recuperation time for a certain feral would be coming up with some leftover time for play…

"I see movement." Lexa interrupted his pleasant train of thought, and Brennan focused again. Yes, it looked like several figures crashing through the forest, staggering and falling over each other. Brennan's gut tightened; the other half of the team had not had an easy time of it. He counted: one, two, three…where was four? Three plus one hostage equals four. There ought to be four people. Ben had said that they'd gotten the girl. Who had gotten left behind? Brennan jumped out of the SUV and started to run, Lexa on his tail. Electrons crackled at his fingertips, waiting to be launched at anyone foolish enough to follow. This wouldn't be for fun, this would be serious. This was hauling damaged asses out of danger.

Treo was first, staggering into the clearing in front of Brennan and Lexa, dropping to his knees and gasping for breath. Behind him was the girl they had gone after; Brennan recognized her instantly from her picture, even through the smeared mascara and the terrified expression. Her clothes were torn far beyond what was reasonable for a mad dash through a forest, and Brennan gritted his teeth. Arrigo clearly had much to answer for.

Lexa could count better and faster than Brennan. "Where's Jesse?" she demanded, the fear sharp in her voice. "Where is he?"

Ben had to hang onto a broad tree trunk to keep from toppling over. Blood oozed from a bullet wound in his arm; Brennan could still smell the gunpowder emanating from the bloody sleeve. "We lost him."

"What do you mean, you lost him?" Lexa was about to lose it herself.

"I mean, he's gone." Ben closed his eyes wearily. "They got him just as we came out of the building. He never saw it coming. Straight to the chest. Through the heart."

"No." It was a horrified whimper.

"I—" Ben couldn't go on. He swayed. Brennan grabbed him, eased the big man to the forest floor. "Dammit."

"That's not possible," Lexa insisted. "Jesse's a molecular! Bullets can't hurt him!"

"Not if he doesn't see it coming." Ben was going under.

Brennan shoved his hands under the man's shoulders. "Treo, give me a hand getting him into the SUV. If we don't do it now, he'll go out on us."

"And he's too big to manhandle," Treo agreed, grunting under the weight of the super-soldier. "Damn, Ben, go on a diet or something."

Lexa turned on the girl, tears still smudging the mascara across her adolescent cheeks. Lexa already felt beyond tears. _You're a professional, girl. You don't cry. And you don't get attached to anyone, not like that. He's just a damn good member of my team. He's saved my butt, and I resent not being able to even the score. That's all. That's all_. "You better be worth his life, girl." And Lexa stalked off after the men to the SUV, Amanda trailing in her wake. "Brennan, I'm going back." _What the hell am I talking about?_

Treo gazed at her with sympathy. "He's dead, Lexa. I'm sorry, but I saw him fall. There was blood all over. There's nothing you can do for him."

"I'm going."

Brennan didn't turn around. "Not yet."

"But—"

"I said, _not yet_, Lexa." He finished stowing Ben into the back seat. The super-soldier was all but unconscious, limp across the back seat. "If he's dead, he'll wait for us. If he's not, well, we've got this girl to get to the safety of her father first. Then we get Shal, and we rip this place apart brick by brick and stomp it into the ground. Got it?"

"Got it." The cold light of revenge began to burn inside her breast. Arrigo would pay. Jesse Kilmartin would be avenged.


	5. Roses 5

There was silence on the trip back to the Windom facility. The guards waved them through with barely a glance; Treo had radioed ahead to expect the SUV, and the man at the gate recognized the son of the founder quickly. Lexa drove, her thoughts bleak, using the excuse of needing to keep her mind on the road to avoid the thoughts that she really dreaded.

_He's not dead. He's not dead_.

But Treo had repeated it, with details: Jesse had phased them out through the wall of the Arrigo building. None of them had seen the guards. No one had heard anything until shots rang out. The first took Jesse high in the chest, the second hit Ben in the arm. Treo himself went icy to protect his sister, then Ben recovered enough to strike back. They ran, leaving a dead body behind. There was no choice; the only other alternative was to stay and die.

_What am I going to tell Shalimar? _How _am I going to tell Shalimar?_

Amanda too was subdued, clutching onto Brennan like a drowning child, needing the comfort of a strong body. Brennan automatically snugged her closer, allowing her to rest her head against his shoulder. He caressed her soft curls, fingering the one closer to his heart. Lexa threw them a sour look. _Jesse not even cold, Shalimar in her sick bed, and all you can do is seduce some jailbait. You're disgusting, Brennan._

By the time they returned to the facility, Ben had recovered enough to wobble unsteadily onto his feet, Brennan and Treo hauling his arms over their shoulders, helping him to enter the main lobby of the facility. Drops of blood landed on the marbled tile, horrifying the evening receptionist, although not a word did she say. Instead, buttons were pushed and help in the form of some of Ben's security troops appeared with a stretcher. It took four of them to maneuver the super-soldier onto the guerney, but it was for the best. "This way," Treo directed, taking charge. "My father will want to see to him immediately. Mandi, get the elevator, would you?"

"On it." Mandi brushed by Brennan, the skin to skin contact warming him and chilling Lexa. _What was the little tramp up to?_ Her clothes were still half off, displaying parts of her that were more decently covered. A reaction from her kidnapping? Some weird psychological response? _After all, the kid was an empath. Aren't all empaths crazy?_ Lexa's head hurt.

"I'll see to Shalimar," she offered. "Brennan? Coming with me?"

"Be up in a few." Brennan's eyes were locked onto Amanda's backside. The denim was ripped in a revealing spot, and Brennan was trying to see what it revealed. The elevator doors closed on the group with Ben. Lexa was left behind and alone, trying to figure out why Brennan had just dumped Shalimar. Before they learned of Jesse's death, out in the forest lobbing electrons and photons at the enemy, Shalimar was all that Brennan could talk about: how worried he was about her and how he wanted to hold her. First thing he had intended to do after the mission was completed was to go to the feral and make certain she was okay.

Now he couldn't spare a moment.

Maybe Brennan thought he couldn't face her? That Shalimar would blame _him_ for letting her 'little brother' get killed? Or maybe that Brennan just couldn't bear to watch the love of his life cry.

Neither concept rang true.

Third option: Brennan was a cad, had been using Shalimar for a little light entertainment, and when some equally as attractive entertainment entered the picture he went where he thought he could get the most tail. That made a little more sense. Grateful girl, doting father. Brennan could make a nice little nest for himself right here in this rich little hideaway. No one would find him here. Nice life. Bastard.

And he was about to let Lexa do all the really rotten stuff. Lexa got to tell Shalimar that Jesse was dead. That the molecular wasn't coming back. And that the man that she had given her heart to, one Brennan Mulwray, as fickle as the lightning that he festered within him, was dancing after their host's daughter.

Life really sucked sometimes.

* * *

"Did you see him fall?" Shalimar's voice was far more even than it had any right to be.

But Lexa could hear the tremor begging to be released. "No," she admitted. "I was with Brennan."

"He's not dead."

_That's what I want to believe too, sweetheart. But people die in this business. We're mutants. The world really is out to get us._

Shalimar flipped the covers back, slid her bare feet to the cold floor, getting her bearings. "He's not dead," she repeated. "He's not. I would know it if he were. Where's Brennan? We have to go back and get Jesse."

"Brennan's downstairs," Lexa said. "Ben got shot, too." _But I'm not going to tell you what lover-boy is doing, and it ain't helping stitch up the super-soldier_.

Shalimar seemed to accept that explanation, and Lexa was grateful. But Shalimar continued to get up, grabbing not a comfortable robe but her jeans and a shirt.

Lexa caught the feral by the arm. "Shalimar, you're in no condition to go anywhere, let alone fight. Arrigo's place is as secure as this one."

"And you made a shambles of it."

"Brennan and I stayed outside as a diversion," Lexa corrected. "Jesse got them in and out."

"And now you'll have me." Shalimar couldn't help it; the tears had started, unbidden. She dashed them away angrily. "He's not dead, Lexa! He's not! He's not!"

It felt awkward; it felt right: Lexa hugged Shalimar close. "I miss him too, Shal." And she would swear to the end of time that all the tears belonged to the feral, and none to her. _Being part of Mutant X will _not _turn me soft!_

* * *

No, he was definitely not comfortable. And either he had massed solid for a lot longer than he was accustomed to or even supposed to be capable of, or Jesse Kilmartin was tied up, for movement was out of the question.

Not a problem. As his wits returned, he realized that he hadn't massed while unconscious and that he was indeed tied securely. Still not a problem. Being tied up, for the molecular, never was. A twist of the neurons and he'd be free whenever he wanted.

But becoming free might not be the best option at present. Jesse pushed on memory cells, trying to figure out how he'd gotten into this mess. Slowly it came back: rescuing Amanda Windom from the despicable Arrigo trying to ravish her, racing through the estate forest and meeting with Amanda's and Treo's father. Then it got a little fuzzy. No, it got foggy, as in fog in his face that choked him, courtesy of Amanda's brother Treo. And then he woke up here.

Okay, memory retrieved. Next question: why? Some of the pieces fell into place, like being carefully maneuvered into a position where none of the rest of Mutant X was around to back him up. Maybe Jesse was just being paranoid but, as Brennan liked to say, _the world really is out to get us_. And Jesse's current status seemed to back that statement up with cold hard facts.

Speaking of which, he was cold and this floor was hard. _Let's open our eyes, shall we, and see where the hell we've landed this time?_

_Okay, really wish we hadn't done that_. The clinic back at Sanctuary had always seemed cold enough but it was home, and it had had Adam and when things weren't going right he could always count on the clinic to have what was needed to make him feel better. _Never like going there but really liked the results_.

This clinic/lab had all the tortures of the Sanctuary clinic and none of the comforts. It was larger by far, and cooler. Someone had cranked the air-conditioner up high. The bio bed looked pretty similar until he saw the restraints. Sure, the Sanctuary version had had restraints but those were just for emergencies and Adam had gone to a fair amount of trouble to make them look as non-threatening as possible. Restraints just didn't have the same terrifying effect when they were lined with soft blue fuzz. The heavy chain-laced version on this bio-bed looked like emergencies happened a lot and to clinic personnel who just didn't give a damn about their patient. Or maybe they were just re-defining 'emergency'. In any case, Jesse really didn't want to lie on that stretcher in the center of the lab. Nor did getting strapped into any of the standing, sitting, or lying contraptions seem to be any improvement. The bubbling beakers on the bench looked more like a Frankenstein lab than Adam's workplace and whoever arranged this place didn't seem to worry about the large hypodermics sitting out in the open for any victim to see. At least Adam had kept his decently behind closed doors until needed. This did _not_ seem like a good place to be.

A huge fish tank to one side caught his attention, the size large enough to contain a moderately sized shark. Inside looked like a conglomeration of nothing. No fish, no water, just a lot of what seemed to be a curiously substantial mist inside. He peered at it; yes, he almost thought he could see movement through the fog, then whatever lived in there swirled away.

_Hah. At least I didn't see teeth in there. Score one for the good guys_.

But the lab itself—and yes, there was no doubt that this was a well-equipped well-funded genetics lab designed for research on mutants, willing and otherwise—was devoid of researchers. And, fortunately, it also seemed devoid of gun-wielding guard types. Jesse could either remain where he was, tied up on the cold and hard floor in a four by four metal cage, or he could phase the hell out of Dodge.

_Do we even have to consider this?_ Jesse phased, and the ropes fell off like rotting vines. He stood up, dusted himself off, grateful that all his body parts were intact and seemed to be functioning at their usual high degree of efficiency. Now to exit this cage and find out why Brennan, Shalimar, and Lexa weren't tearing this place—where ever it was—apart looking for him.

He took hold of the wiring that the cage was made of, preparatory to phasing the material so that he could move into the lab itself and out the door. The instant Jesse touched the bars, he knew he'd made a big mistake. Electrical current crackled into his fingertips, and every muscle he owned including ones he never knew he had spasmed into contorted agony. Jesse's last thought as blackness seized him once again was _someone's been taking lessons from Adam on how to take down a molecular. Did they have to be such an apt pupil?_

* * *

Thank heaven for the miracles of modern pharmaceuticals. Lexa had finally resorting to drugging her teammate to persuade Shalimar to stay in bed and recuperate. Yes, Lexa fully intended to return to the Arrigo facility and tear the place apart looking for answers—_if Jesse was dead, she wouldn't leave a single brick standing. Hear that, Arrigo?_—but her covert ops training came into play. She needed back up, back up that wasn't likely to bleed from yesterday's emergency appendectomy. And because of that need, the mission needed to happen tomorrow with gratitude for the incredible healing speed of a healthy feral.

Where the hell was Brennan? The elemental hadn't even so much as come up to Shalimar's guest bedroom to see how the feral was doing. Damn man was thinking with his tail again, couldn't see past the nose on the jailbait that he'd rescued. And Brennan hadn't even done much of the rescuing, not that the Windom girl could have seen. Brennan provided cover, the fireworks that acted as a distraction. The only rescuing type people that Mandi chick had seen were her brother and Big Ben the super-soldier.

_And Jesse._ _Lying there dead in the dirt_. Lexa ferociously bit her lip, forcing the tears back behind her eyes. _Damn you, Jesse Kilmartin, for dying! You and your puppy dog eyes! Damn you for getting under my skin!_

Tactics. That needed to come next. They needed to come up with a plan on how to best get the three of them into Arrigo's facility, search it thoroughly, and extract themselves and Jesse's body. Give the man a decent burial, a marker of some kind. _Here lies Jesse Kilmartin, a man who got himself killed helping one too many mutants. How stupid was that? _Lexa dug her nails into the palms of her hands. Not as good as lip biting, but still effective.

The map that they'd used the first time should do just as well for the second go-around. Lexa headed downstairs to the general living quarters to find someone who could get it for her. It didn't matter who, Ben or that brother or Dr. Dad, but having the map to start the planning phase became a priority. Getting Brennan to participate would also be useful, Lexa had to admit. The man was good at getting in and out of places. Moleculars were fine, but lockpicks were a tool that anyone could use, given enough training. Brennan Mulwray had that training. Lexa trotted down the stairs, eschewing the elevator as being contrary to good exercise.

She found them in the main living area, the Great Room Ben had called it. It was a room that Lexa approved of, when she was in the mood, one that demonstrated both good taste and good financing. It was large, with windows sensibly covered so that snipers couldn't see in, and a well-stocked bar that brother Treo was taking advantage of. Ben relaxed on the over-sized sofa, book in hand and other arm cradled in a white cotton sling that looked horribly out of place in this genteel environment. Unpleasant occurrences didn't happen in rooms such as this. Ben made up for it by burying his nose in a book, and Lexa recalled something about mid-term exams early next week. Ben clearly was serious about his education. He looked up, acknowledged her presence with a distracted smile, sniffed at the rose bouquet sitting on the end table near his head, and dove back into his text.

Not so the remaining pair. Amanda Windom was snuggled up on another upholstered chair, Brennan perched on the arm beside her, smiling at the sixteen year old. Education was the furthest thing from their minds, unless one wanted to include learning the language of love. Lexa did not. But both Ben and Treo seemed oblivious to the billing and cooing going on to one side of the room, seemed to take it as a normal part of everyday life. Seemed to think that Treo would be addressing Brennan as 'brother-in-law' just as soon as Mandi came of age.

_When hell freezes over_. Lexa marched herself over to the pair. "A word, Brennan." It was not a request. It was an order.

Brennan looked at her disinterestedly. "What's up, Lexa?" And looked back down at Mandi. And smiled.

"Now, Brennan." Lexa glared at the girl. _Back off, sister! I've got work for your lover-boy_.

That got results—but not the results that Lexa expected. What she had expected was that Brennan would sigh heavily, disengage himself from the clutches of Jailbait Windom, and come outside the room where he'd get the dressing down of his life if Lexa let him live that long. And if he did manage to live, Shalimar would be the next to tear him to shreds when she woke up the next morning and found out why he hadn't been at her bedside. _Mulwray, you have plenty to answer for_.

Amanda Windom's eyes grew big and round and nervous, and that was all that it took. Treo turned an expression of livid fury onto Lexa for her actions, and his defense of his sister was the mildest of any in the room.

Ben's book got tossed away. The arm came out of the sling, fist clenched, the man perched on the balls of his feet ready to dive at the mutant threatening Amanda. That the mutant happened to be Lexa was immaterial. And, when you came right down to it, Lexa realized, she really didn't know this Ben Sutter person at all. Big super-soldier with only Brennan's word that the scarecrow now had a brain. Right now he didn't look like it. He looked damn dangerous!

And Brennan—! The elemental actually jumped up, turned to place himself between Lexa and Mandi, and raised his arms in attack mode, electrons crackling.

Lexa was taken aback. She lifted her hands in both alarm and surrender. "Okay, guys. If it means that much to you, it can wait." One she could handle, possibly even two, but not three. Lexa started to edge out of the room.

Ben took a long whiff of the rose bouquet at his elbows and relaxed. "It's okay, people. Stand down. Lexa, I'm sorry. We over-reacted. It happens around here sometimes."

_So does shit. What the hell just went on here?_ Brennan was still glaring daggers at her, with Treo helping out but the electrons had gone back inside and the icicles that had begun to form on Treo's hand sublimated into thin air. Lexa had a brief and wild thought: those icicles could be flung like knives and would vanish as soon as they melted. The perfect assassination tool.

"I can see that it does." Lexa swallowed, commanding her own adrenaline to subside. "We'll talk in the morning. Brennan, we have some decisions to make."

"Um." Brennan had already gone back to admiring Miss Jailbait.

_Hell in a handbasket. Rapidly_.


	6. Roses 6

"He's waking up. Hurry up, you idiots. Get it onto him."

Jesse knew that voice, had heard it somewhere recently. Not overly familiar, no; not Brennan and, considering that the voice was male, not Shalimar or Lexa. He also thought he remembered Brennan not being here in this tiny cage, and winced as he did remember getting an electric shock from the cage worthy of the elemental. While he was still contemplating that thought, rough hands seized him and wrapped something around his temples, snugging it tight. There was a little burn made worse by his slow return to consciousness, and he yelped involuntarily.

"Ah, Mr. Kilmartin. You can open your eyes now."

_Rather not_. But Jesse indeed levered open his eyes and found himself peering blearily at Dr. Abner Windom.

"How do you feel?" The words were devoid of inflection, bereft of anything approaching concern. Abner Windom was merely collecting data.

"What are you doing?" Jesse croaked, his own voice far from normal. _Feet._ _Up on my feet._ He struggled to stand up. Large hands helped to hoist and hold him there.

"Mind intact, gross motor appropriate for this level of consciousness," Windom muttered to himself, making notes on a pad. He looked up. "Try to phase."

"Go to hell."

"I can't test the effectiveness of the inhibitor if you don't try to use your gift," Windom explained with little patience.

Jesse had equally little patience. "Why don't you tell me what's going on, and then maybe I'll consider your request."

Dr. Windom's face cleared. "Ah. You are still under the misapprehension that you have options. Disabuse yourself of that notion immediately, Mr. Kilmartin, and things will go more easily for both of us."

Jesse came up with the most brilliant of responses that he could under the circumstances. "Huh?"

Windom sighed. His pupil was flunking this exam, and it would have dire consequences. "A demonstration, then." He fiddled with the PDA-looking device attached to his clipboard.

Jesse immediately really wished that Windom hadn't. The strap around his forehead tightened, but that was the least of his problems.

_Burning._ _Tendrils of agony snaking into his neurons, raking each one against the other._

Echoes of his scream died away into the silence. Through watering eyes Jesse noted that all four of Windom's henchmen seemed shocked at the intensity of fiendish device's work. One looked ready to throw up. _That's okay, buddy. Me, too_.

Windom made a note on his PDA. "Inhibitor, highly effective. Hm. I'll have to look into tying it into the fence. Maybe I can develop it as a broad band defense." He made another note to himself, then looked up at his victim. "Thank you. I haven't had the opportunity to test this device in a real situation. I can move forward with it now."

"You're welcome." Jesse felt far from pleased. The strap felt extraordinarily heavy across his brow.'_Wrung out' is more like it_. "You can take it off now. I won't mind."

"Don't be silly. Remove his clothing," Windom instructed his henchmen. "We'll need the clothing intact later on when we dump the body, and he's likely to ruin them during the procedure. You, go fetch Dr. Sutter."

"What are you going to do to me?"

But Windom ignored him, instead directing the men to place Jesse into one of the restraining devices that he'd shuddered over earlier. It was one of the chair contraptions, one that clamped onto his arms and legs yet left his now bare back open to inspection. The air felt cold in this clinic, but the shivers that ran up and down Jesse's spine had little to do with temperature. He struggled against the men, but it was no use. They buckled him in until he couldn't move. And with Windom's 'inhibitor' in place, phasing was out of the question.

Beatrice Sutter walked into the laboratory and uttered a sound of shock. "Abner! What are you doing? What is Jesse Kilmartin doing here? You told me he was dead!"

"You know very well what I'm doing," Abner Windom returned testily. "I'm preparing to obtain samples."

"But, why the charade? Why tell the others that he was dead—oh." It dawned on her. Beatrice Sutter might be a tad naïve, but she was not stupid.

Windom turned away from her, helping his men to buckle Jesse into the restraints. "I couldn't take the chance that he would refuse. Get your equipment. We'll start as soon as you've scrubbed."

"Abner, this is inhuman! I never agreed to be part of this! Not like this! Release him immediately!"

"This close to my goal? Release him? Bea, you're raving. Get over there and prepare to obtain the sample."

"I won't do it!"

That brought up Abner Windom short. A set look of anger dropped over his face. "You _will_ participate, Bea. You are my employee. You will do as I say."

"You can't make me, Abner. And when I tell Mutant X and my son about this—"

"You won't tell anyone," Windom growled, advancing on the woman. Beatrice Sutter turned to flee, but Windom was too quick. He slammed the door to the clinic shut, trapping her in.

"Let me out, Abner." Sutter stood her ground, her voice low and threatening.

But Windom held more cards to be played. "You have no choice, Bea. You know what I want. It worked for your son; it can work for my wife. But if you don't help, I'll be forced to take the sample myself, which means that I'll have to use methods that will leave permanent damage while inducing the endogenous adrenaline." He softened his tone, going for cajoling. "You have a steadier hand than I do, Bea. Make this easier on him. It's _going_ to happen either way."

"He saved my son!" Sutter was cracking.

"And he'll save my wife." Windom slipped inside her defenses. "You know how Ben feels about Mandi. And how Mandi and Justin feel about their mother. Isn't that worth a little discomfort?"

"We're not talking a _little_ discomfort, Abner!" she snapped back, strengthening her resolve. "This could kill him!"

"Doubtful. Discomfort, yes. But there is only a sixty-seven percent chance that death will occur."

"And a one hundred percent chance of excrutiating agony!"

"All right! Then consider your own position, Dr. Sutter; yours, and that of your son." Windom had had enough. "The Dominion is outside the door, waiting for me to make that one mistake that will allow them access to the research being performed here in this lab. And that means access not only to me and mine, but to you and your precious son. And you're well aware of how 'gentle' _they'll_ be." He laughed bitterly. "One man, against several. Knowing your son, he'll be dead before he lets the Dominion take him and the going will be hard. Make it easy on this one mutant sitting here in front of us, Bea. Not just for his sake, but for everyone's. You know it; I know it. Or do I need to remind you of that little explosive package that I sewed into your son's gut?" He let the words hang in the air. "Push me too hard, Dr. Sutter, and everyone loses. Not just me and mine but you, your son, and all these mutants that you care about so much. This one molecular, against all the rest. And he might not even die. Might not even have permanent damage."

Dr. Sutter drooped her head, beaten. "All right. But—"

"No but's, Bea. Get to work."

Jesse couldn't see what she was doing from his enforced position but he could hear plenty. He tried to crane his head around. "Dr. Sutter? What's going on? What are you going to do?"

Dr. Sutter's voice was filled with pain. "I'm sorry, Jesse. Do you remember when I first approached Adam? When Ben's mind hadn't been fixed?"

"I remember. I also remember several spinal taps. You took specimens, ran them through whatever process it was, and gave them to Ben. He's normal now. How does that work with what's going on today? Is Dr. Windom's wife's mind damaged? You don't have to go through this farce, Dr. Sutter. I volunteered to help Ben. You don't need these restraints." Jesse was having a hard time keeping his calm. Something cold dripped onto his back, and he flinched.

"That just betadine; I'm sterilizing the area for the spinal tap."

"You're not answering my question." Jesse tried to hold still. It was Bea Sutter back there, doing something he couldn't see, not Windom. He could trust her. He _had_ to trust her.

"It's not her mind, Jesse. Little burn."

A needle stick, local anesthetic pushed into reluctant flesh. The promised burn, then a sensation of numbness. Fingers probing around the area, locating anatomical landmarks. "Then what is it? What are you trying to accomplish here, Dr. Sutter?"

Sigh. Feeling of something _puncturing_ the flesh around his spine. Jesse didn't want to think about where that needle was going. _Got a bunch of delicate human wiring back there, doc._ _Please be careful._ Dr. Sutter kept working. "Dr. Windom's wife is a mutant, Jesse. A molecular."

"Keep going." _I meant the story, not the procedure_. Harpoon probing back there, searching for the way in between the vertebrae. "Ow!"

"Sorry," she muttered. "You'll probably feel a little spark of electricity now."

"Ow! Yes, dammit!"

"Just tickling the nerve. Better now?"

"Yes." Jesse breathed a sigh of relief. "So you need a sample of my spinal fluid."

"Yes." Abner Windom moved into view. "You see that tank over there?"

Yes, Jesse had seen the tank, filled with swirling psychedelic mists. "What's inside?"

"My wife. A molecular."

That didn't sound good. There didn't seem to be anything human inside that tank. Not then when he'd looked, and not now.

"Ever wonder what would happen if you phased and didn't come back?" Windom asked.

_Came close, once._ _Rather not try it again_.

"It happened to my wife." Windom's tone was eerily conversational. "She became ill, lost control of herself. She phased. It was sheer luck that I was close enough to contain all of her molecules." He indicated the tank. "Those molecules are in that tank. I can hear her calling to me." Windom leaned closer to Jesse's face. "I'm an empath, Mr. Kilmartin. I can hear her. She's there, waiting for me to find a way to restore her." He straightened.

"You could have asked. I helped Ben Sutter. I've helped others."

"I couldn't take the chance that you would refuse. Look into my eyes."

"Why?"

"Despite what Dr. Sutter thinks, I intend to keep you in as pristine condition as possible. That means I want to keep you alive. I will quite likely need several samples, and I can't do that if you expire prematurely."

"And why would I do that? Expire, I mean. Unless, of course, you mean to kill me. What are you not telling me?"

"His adrenaline level should be high enough now, Abner." Dr. Sutter jumped in, almost pleading. "You don't need to do anything else to him. He's already scared. I'm ready to obtain the sample. The spinal catheter is in place."

"His adrenaline level is nowhere near high enough," Windom reproved. "Scared, yes, but look at his heart rate. Barelyover one hundred."

"He's athletic," Dr. Sutter argued desperately. "His heart rate will naturally be lower than average."

Windom wouldn't listen. "I need endogenously produced adrenaline in a spinal fluid base, and I will obtain that when his heart rate is over one hundred and forty. The half-life of that adrenaline is measured in minutes, not hours. You will withdraw the sample when I tell you to, Bea, and you will instill it into the tank immediately. Is that clear?" Without waiting for an answer, he leaned over so that his face was in Jesse's. "I am a projective empath, Mr. Kilmartin. I project feeling. But the only feeling I can project is _pain_." He licked his lips. "I need your spinal fluid to be filled with adrenaline. Only _that_ can be used to restore my wife to her natural state. Adrenaline is produced when the body is subjected to stress. When I have subjected your body to enough pain and stress, Dr. Sutter will remove the sample. Your suffering will save my wife." He placed his hands onto Jesse's face, and stared into his eyes.

"Begin."


	7. Roses 7

_Better_. This time Shalimar awoke quickly, no dallying in an early morning doze. She awoke feral style; one moment asleep, the next thoroughly awake and aware of her surroundings.

Those surroundings included a soft bed, a night stand with water on it and a couple of small white pills in a dish—_pain-killers, ugh!_—and a robe for a guest to use. Shalimar slipped into it, noting the dressing at her waist. She felt beneath it, knowing her body the way only a feral could. _Good_. Another day, and the clean incision would be all but healed. The advantage to being a feral: rapid healing.

Didn't mean that it didn't still hurt. But Shalimar wasn't about to take advantage of those little white pills. She'd take the discomfort any day to avoid that feeling of being off-kilter, of being not entirely in control of herself.

Besides, Shalimar had a mission. She had a date with a certain mad scientist named Arrigo, in his lair, about a certain 'little brother'. Narcotic pain-killers would interfere with her pleasure at ripping Arrigo's arms off.

"Lexa?" she called, belting the robe into place. _I need clothes, I need a map, and I need transportation to Arrigo's._

One out of three would have to do. Lexa had clothes, scrounged from their host's supply in a back room. Shalimar quickly changed into something more worthy of a feral on a mission. "Where's Brennan?"

"Haven't seen him all morning," Lexa lied. _Not gonna tell you that I saw him at breakfast, mooning over our host's daughter. That hurt can come later. I've had enough today to last me a lifetime and it's not even ten o'clock_ _yet.._

"Map?"

"Working on it." _Yeah. Working on not getting us tossed out of here as I ask. Need a base to work from, need supplies, Shal. Need allies, who are in short supply right now, including some of our own._

"Work harder," Shalimar grunted, tugging her belt tight against the bandage at her waist. "Let's go. We'll get Brennan and some schematics of Arrigo's place, and go pay our respects to a certain mad scientist."

Lexa trailed after the feral, uncertain what to do. What would happen when Shalimar found out about Brennan and Amanda Windom? A melt-down was in the offing, and Lexa felt powerless to stop it. _Ever been on a runaway train, Lexa, dear? No?_ Things were moving toward an unhealthy conclusion.

Well, _shit_. If there was nothing she could do, then let it happen. Brennan had brought this on himself, let him deal with it. Lexa had more important things to consider and if the scene that was about to occur made it happen any faster then it was a good thing. It was going to happen, so get it over with and move on. How fast would the feral be ready to move out after Jesse once she caught Brennan in the act? Lexa honestly didn't know. The bond between Shalimar and her one-time lover had been pretty tight. Still was, on Shalimar's end.

Mutant X was falling apart, and badly. Jesse dead, Brennan besotted with a rich man's daughter. That left her and Shalimar, and Lexa wasn't certain about herself. _There's always Raoul on the Riviera_, she mused, the one who was heir to the family fortune. He would keep her in luxury for the rest of her days if she gave him the slightest hint of being interested.

One problem: Lexa hated the thought of being a 'kept woman'. Going to luncheon with all those twits whose biggest problem was that the ribbon on their skirt didn't match their expensive leather shoes. Pretending that being seen at Wimbledon in a new designer hat and manicured nails was the highlight of the sporting season. And then Raoul'd want children, to carry on the family name. Preferably a boy; do arrange it, Lexa, and don't stop squirting out the little brats until you get it right.

For someone who'd taken the Dominion to war, it seemed pretty lame.

All right; decision time. Mutant X was dead, that was obvious. Without puppy-eyed Jesse to hold them together, they were simply a collection of misfits who were better off making their own separate ways. They would each light somewhere, get on people's nerves for a while, then flit off to annoy someone else somewhere else. That was the way of freaks.

But she owed it to Jesse to find out what had become of his body. _No, you don't. You don't owe anyone anything, least of all someone who tried to get beneath your prickly exterior._ Stupid mutant, trying to get her to care about him. And that kiss! It really didn't mean anything, as they'd both agreed.

But Lexa paid her debts. Jesse had saved her life more than once. She could do this one altruistic work, and then leave Mutant X behind. A bad memory. A tale to tell someone _else's_ grandkids, because she sure wasn't going through the steps in between needed to acquire any.

"Brennan?"

_Let the fireworks begin_.

It was the Great Room again, the one with the heavy velvet drapes to keep light and vision out, with the grand piano in the corner and the three heavy upholstered sofas dotting the oriental carpet and the fireplace that never seemed to be lit. It was the room with Treo lounging at one end, creating small ice sculptures by hand—literally by hand—and Ben curled up on one of the sofas near the end table with the vase with freshly cut red roses with a book in one hand and trying to take notes with the other hand still in its sling. That mid-term exam was getting closer.

But it was the couple on the sofa in front of the cold fireplace that had caught Shalimar's attention. Not that the fireplace needed a fire in it; the pair were generating plenty of heat sending smoldering looks back and forth at each other. Brennan caressed Amanda's shoulder. Amanda rested an oh-so-delicate hand on his knee and turned a freshly scrubbed face up to his.

Lexa thought she would barf.

"Brennan?" It wasn't anger. It was bewilderment. It was hurt. It was sadness. It was the blackest of despair.

And, worst of all, Shalimar didn't even try to rip his head off. Just a little voice, asking, _Brennan, what are you doing? Why did you play with my heart?_

_Didn't you say you loved me?_

* * *

"Don't go getting yourself killed," Lexa hissed at Shalimar.

The look that Shalimar handed back was dead. Shalimar Fox, feral, was full of life. The girl beside Lexa was a mere haunted shell of a person. _Already dead_, Lexa feared. How else should Shalimar feel? Her 'little brother' cold on a slab somewhere inside. The supposed love of her life spooning after someone else. Yeah, this was going to be a very tricky mission to pull off and get out alive. Did Shalimar even _want_ to come back alive?

And it didn't help that there were just the two of them. Brennan was entirely too interested in Amanda Windom to hold up his end, and as for the Ben and Treo? They'd _seen_ Jesse go down. They didn't need convincing that the molecular was dead; Lexa didn't bother asking them to go and help with this mission to Arrigo's. It was just a couple of particularly stupid ferals and chromatics that refused to believe, who had to know what happened. _You're getting soft, Lexa. You're letting your emotions get in your way. It's going to kill you, very very soon_.

So what? If this mission didn't kill her, the Dominion would. One end would be just as good as another.

All of which meant that Lexa found herself just outside the heavy gate that surrounded the Arrigo facility. Lexa used binoculars to scan the security guards that held the front entrance closed. Just men, and not much else. Lots of firepower but no infrared, nothing that would automatically spot a chromatic gone lightless. _Some music to wait with, if you please?..._

Their chance came with a delivery truck. While the driver handed over the lading bill, Lexa grabbed Shalimar's hand, sent the photons fleeing, and jumped onto the outside footrests on the back of the truck feeling grimly pleased with herself. Not only had she gotten them in, but a lift to the main building as well.

The loading dock made an ideal entry point: lots of hot and sweaty bodies hoisting heavy crates. The movement and heat would confuse any sensors that Arrigo had installed to prevent just such a foray as the distaff half of Mutant X had planned. Getting inside was child's play for the chromatic, tugging Shalimar along by the invisible hand.

Now the hard work would begin: finding Jesse. _Or what's left of him_—Lexa firmly put that thought aside. Shalimar put her nose to the air, delicately testing the odors, searching for a familiar scent. Lexa could tell by the droop of her shoulders that there was little to nothing to go on.

They had two choices: open every door and peek in or…

"Option number two," Lexa said grimly. "Let's find Arrigo."

Shalimar set her shoulders. "We'll have to, anyway. I have a murder to avenge."

Finding Arrigo was a great deal easier. The two mutants followed the golden rule of business everywhere: when looking for the top man, head for the top floor. The penthouse view. Upstairs.

Which was where Arrigo lived. Shalimar got a strong whiff of the man—"Does he bathe in cologne?" she grumbled—even though the genetic scientist was not lounging in his pajamas. Arrigo kept a suite of rooms for his personal use, money lavishly spent in a fashion that had Lexa turning up her nose as gauche. Money, yes; ostentatious, no. Didn't the scientist want to spend his money on normal scientific finery, like a new chromatogramoscopic doohickey? Where was his pride in his science? At least put in a high end computer!

But no, Dr. Arrigo believed in separating his work from his pleasure. From what Ben had said, Arrigo had imprisoned Amanda Windom on this floor. It had been a comfortable prison, but a prison nonetheless. And, since Arrigo really was a genetic researcher of no small abilities according to Dr. Sutter, the prison was likely close to the research labs. A man with tastes like these wouldn't want to go far for his subjects. Although forcing his attentions on a sixteen year old didn't seem consistent with prison and research.

Didn't matter. They had a mission: find Arrigo and force the truth from him. Extract vengeance for Jesse.

Luck was with them. They found Arrigo alone in his office, guided there by Shalimar's unerring sense of smell and an overwhelming stench of Eau de Overkill.

Dr. Hector Arrigo was a small man, dapper with a heavily waxed mustache that both mutants were devoutly grateful not to be expected to kiss. Being charmed by the victim was not on their agenda, although Arrigo tried his best to put it there. A painful armlock by Shalimar helped the doctor re-order his priorities.

"Wh—what do you want?"

"Where is he?" Shalimar's hiss could sound very deadly when whispered into an ear from less than an inch away.

"Wh—who?"

"Do you always stutter like this?" Lexa asked casually, picking up an ornate gold-chased letter opener from the mahogany desk. Blunt, but with the light glinting off the metallic surface it looked awesomely sharp. "I'd start stuttering out the answers we want to hear, if I were you."

"Who are you?" Arrigo swallowed hard, pomaded sweat beading on his brow.

"There was a girl here yesterday," Lexa said, masking her impatience. "Remember? About sixteen? Not in the mood to be raped by an older scientist with a slick mustache?" She picked at one manicured fingernail with the letter opener.

"I didn't rape her—"

"No, but not through any fault of your own. Interruptions by an older brother and his two friends are a wonderful thing. What would have happened if they hadn't come along, slime?"

"You don't understand—"

"Don't bother justifying your actions. I've heard it too many times before. 'She asked for it.' 'She really wanted it.' 'She just needs a strong man to make her happy.'" Lexa placed the tip of the letter opener under Arrigo's chin, annoyed at finding herself getting angry. _What happened to the cool professional that you used to be? Get your act back together, woman!_ "Aren't you lucky that that is not why we're here?"

"Wh-why are you here? My research is about psionics—"

"Now, isn't that too bad? I'm not a psionic." Lexa looked over at Shalimar who still had Arrigo in a painful half-Nelson. "Are you, Shalimar?"

Shalimar shoved a little harder, forcing a grunt out of her captive. "Nope. Not even interested in them right now."

"Hm. What are you interested in, Shalimar?" Toying.

"A molecular, Lexa." Another twist, another groan laced with fear. "One particular molecular."

Arrigo was on his toes, trying to keep his arm from dislocating. "Please, let me go. I haven't touched Windom's son. I don't work with molecular's."

Lexa put her face two inches from Arrigo, then thought better of it when his cologne threatened to make her eyes tear. She pulled back. "What makes you think that it's young master Windom? He's safe at home with Daddy."

"I don't know any other moleculars!" Arrigo wailed. "Please, please, you have to believe me! I don't have anything to do with moleculars! They're out of my realm of expertise!"

"What about the one that you shot yesterday?" Shalimar hissed into his ear. "The man you killed. Your guards shot him. Where is he?"

"I don't know what—ow!"

"Lying will only get you killed," Lexa observed calmly. "Shalimar there behind you is a feral, which, as you well know, means that she's only a hair's breath away from ripping off that mustache and taking your face with it. I'd tell us what we want to know, doctor."

"But I don't know!" Arrigo wailed. "My guards didn't kill anyone yesterday! We searched the grounds! They all got away safely with Windom's daughter! They didn't kill anyone!"

"I could put a slice in your jugular that would take, oh, maybe minutes for you to bleed to death," Lexa started to say when Shalimar interrupted.

"He's telling the truth, Lexa."

Lexa looked sharply at her teammate.

"I smell fear, and I smell a few other things"—_disgusting lust_, she didn't verbalize—"but no lying. There were no dead bodies here yesterday."

"I told you that," Arrigo whimpered.

"Shut up." Arm twist. _Yelp_. "Take us to where they escaped. The exact spot," Shalimar warned the scientist. "I'll know if you're lying."

"Yes! Yes! The exact spot!"

"And warn your people to back off," Lexa added sardonically. "I'm certain that you'd rather that no one get hurt. Least of all, your own people. Not to mention yourself."

"Yes! Yes! They'll keep away! Anything!" Arrigo babbled.

It took a while to find. Arrigo himself had been above the fray—he had hirelings to do the dirty fighting for him and getting his money's worth from them was part of the deal—and the geneticist had to ask those hirelings to point out where the quartet had emerged from the building. The hirelings weren't certain; Jesse had apparently let the quartet out through the brick wall just to confuse the issue but Shalimar was finally able to locate the spot. Twenty-four hours hadn't completely washed away the scent, but it was a close thing.

The feral transferred control of their hostage to Lexa, sniffing around the site, hunting feral fashion. Lexa could barely contain her impatience, holding the blunt letter opener to Arrigo's throat in a false threat. The letter-opener wouldn't do more than leave a bruise, but Arrigo didn't know that. If it really came down to it, Lexa knew, her finger with a laser slash would be much more potent. _Finger loaded, and not afraid to use it._

Shalimar stepped carefully over the area, first sniffing at it thoroughly before laying down her own scent. Step by step, inch by inch, she covered the area. Lexa covered her impatience.

Finally the feral was done.

"Well?"

"He was here," Shalimar said carefully and deliberately, "but there were no shots fired here. Not at this spot. No blood scent."

"Further on?"

"I'll follow the trail. But Jesse was not killed outside the building."

"That's what I told you!" Arrigo put in.

"Shut up," Lexa said irritably. "What happened?"

"They came out," Shalimar said, eyes still slitted and yellow, "and they looked around for a moment. All four were here: Jesse, Ben, Treo, and Mandi. They ran into the woods right about there." She pointed.

"Follow the trail," Lexa ordered. "Arrigo, your people better stay away."

"Yes! Yes! Away! They'll stay away!"

The man was getting on her nerves, Lexa decided. They'd have to ditch him as quickly as possible. _Slime_. "Shut up. I should slice you just on general principles. Going after a sixteen year old girl. You should be ashamed of yourself."

"I didn't—"

"They _saw_ you," Lexa snarled. "They _saw_ you pawing at her. _I_ saw her clothes half-ripped off. You're lucky it wasn't me there in that room watching you force yourself on her. You wouldn't still be alive, slime."

"She's an empath!" Arrigo finally broke in. "She's an _empath_!"

"So?"

Arrigo looked at her as though she'd gone mad. "She's an empath," he repeated.

"I heard you the first time. What's that's got to do with anything?"

Arrigo blinked. "She projects emotion. Just like her father. They're both mono-emoters. They can only project one emotion."

"Keep going." The man still wasn't making any sense. That was the trouble with genius types, Lexa decided. They never realized that not everyone knew everything that they did. Brilliant idiots, everyone of them.

Dr. Hector Arrigo tried to explain very carefully, as if to a four year old. "Amanda Windom projects attraction. It's not pheromones, it's a psionic attraction to the opposite sex. She turns it on: men fall at her feet. And, as an adolescent, she has poor control over it. She did it to me. I was helpless in the throes of emotion."

It fell into place, every last stinking bit of it. Lexa went cold. "Are you saying that you didn't kidnap her?"

"Well, not exactly—"

"_How_, exactly?"

"Well, yes, I needed to experiment on her—"

"So you did kidnap her."

"I invited her to help me." Arrigo's indignation was ludicrous to behold. "She came to dinner to hear my proposal. I am studying psionics, and her father moleculars. I needed her help, and I was prepared to offer her a position in my company. Her talents were being wasted in Windom's household. Her father had no use for her."

"But—?" Shalimar prodded.

"It…becomes a little fuzzy," Arrigo admitted. His ears flushed, followed by the rest of his face. He was what, fifty or so? Just right for a mid-life crisis. And if he were right, that Amanda Windom was a projective psionic? Lexa ground her teeth. It would certainly explain Brennan's behavior as well as Arrigo's. Arrigo gulped. "My theory is that she projects it more forcefully when she feels threatened. It would be a survival trait, developed over millenia. The female psionically persuades all the men in the area to defend her. Ms. Windom became alarmed at something, and automatically began projecting. I was helpless against her mutant powers."

Lexa pounced on his wording. "She became alarmed at _something_? And what, pray tell, would that _something_ have been?"

If Arrigo could have sunk through the ground like a molecular, he would have. Instead, all he could do was cast his eyes downward and mumble.

"What was that, Dr. Arrigo?"

"I said—" Arrigo coughed, cleared his throat, and tried again. "I said, I told her she had to stay with me. She was so beautiful!" he wailed.

And only sixteen years old. Damn mid-life crises. Why couldn't the man just go out and buy a hot car, like everyone else with an over-age Y chromosome? He certainly had enough cash.


	8. Roses 8

There was movement underneath him, and Jesse felt himself being carefully deposited onto a hard stretcher.

It didn't matter how uncomfortable it was. The important thing at the moment was that he was lying down. Everything hurt: his head, his back, his arms and legs, and, oh yes, his head was killing him. Did Jesse mention that his head was pounding? It was enough to make him wish he'd stayed unconscious.

How long? _Crap_; that was the bad thing about unconsciousness, that he hadn't a clue of how long he'd been out. He remembered Dr. Windom's sharp features, those eyes boring into his, and sharp empathic agony lancing through his neurons. His throat hurt, too; clearly he'd screamed himself raw. Had whatever Windom wanted worked? Was he finished torturing Jesse?

"This is barbaric!" a deep voice said, horrified and angry. A door slammed shut behind the voice. It took a few moments for the challenging process of _thought_ to kick in, but Jesse was able to identify the owner of the voice as Ben Sutter. Ah, it was Ben who had carried him to this stretcher, big ol' economy-sized Ben with the biceps the diameter of tree trunks. _Next time, a softer bed would be nice. I know you've got some around. Slept in one last night. _Ben continued, "You can't do this! It's inhuman!"

_You tell 'im, Ben._

"I require this," Dr. Windom responded distractedly. "Look, it's working! She's coming back! I see an arm!" More clinking of glassware. "More! I need more serum!"

"Not yet," Dr. Sutter said hurriedly. "Give him forty-eight hours. He's too weak." Jesse felt movement around the stretcher, felt someone poke at his arm, feel the pulse in his throat. It was too much effort to respond to whatever it was that whoever was doing. Breathing would be all the activity he was capable of for a little while. He concentrated on that.

"Forty-eight hours? Impossible, Beatrice. Set him up. We'll finish now and be done with this."

"You can't," Dr. Sutter replied.

"Certainly, I can. Ben, put him back in the chair."

"I mean, you can't," Dr. Sutter repeated. "I gave him some narcotic analgesia. He'll never achieve the level of adrenaline production you need with that on board."

_You gave me that? Isn't that a pain-killer? How come I still feel so bad? _

"Reverse it," Windom demanded. "I need that serum."

"That wouldn't be wise," Dr. Sutter told him, awesomely calm. _You go, doc_. "His heartbeat was erratic toward the end of this session. You run the risk of killing him, and then you'll get no more serum. You've achieved much, Abner, but look at your results. You're going to need several doses of the serum; you wouldn't want to lose the only supply you have, would you?"

_No, I wouldn't_. _Especially since the supplier is me_.

Windom glowered. "Don't push me, Beatrice."

"She's right, Dr. Windom," Ben put in. "Look at him. He's too weak for this. Even I can see that, and I'm not a doctor. Give him forty-eight hours, like Mother said."

_Can I just lie here and look mostly dead? Won't take much effort on my part. Would it help if I said I saw Emma? A bright white light, something like that?_

Windom checked his watch, more for show than anything else. "Eight hours, no more. The analgesia should have more than worn off by then. Give him no more narcotics, Beatrice. Hear me? No more. I need that sample."

"No more," Dr. Sutter agreed serenely. "You have my word, Abner."

"Good. Then come along with me to my office. Help me analyze the data from this session. Perhaps there's a way to speed up the process of restoring my wife to her natural state."

"I'll be along in a moment," Dr. Sutter told him. "I'll check on Jesse one last time, and be there in a minute or two."

"Fine." Through closed eyes Jesse heard the door to the clinic close, a little more firmly than needed, reiterating Windom's instructions to Dr. Sutter not to dawdle.

The Sutters, mother and son, didn't. "Mother?" Ben asked.

The communication patterns developed over years of needing to hide kicked in. Neither needed many words to convey information. "You're right, Ben, we can't leave him to Abner's untender mercy. But we have that explosive device in your belly to remember, Ben. I won't jeopardize your life, either."

"Then take it out." Ben's voice was low and demanding. Repeating an old argument.

"I can't, Ben. I need time, I need anesthesia, I need tools—"

"We can sterilize a knife in a fire," Ben interrupted. "The rest, I can handle. I heal quickly, remember?"

"Not fast enough, and I _won't_ do it without anesthesia, Benjamin." That was his mother talking, not just the super-soldier's chief medical officer. "Abner expects you to participate in this experiment, helping to keep Jesse under control, helping in the lab. You won't be able to hide."

"I'll manage."

"No, you won't, because I won't take that risk. I've bought Jesse eight hours. I told Abner that I'd given him narcotics, but I lied. Give Jesse an hour, then wake him up and tell him to escape. He'll have to do the rest."

"He can't, Mother. You know that. Look at him—he's unconscious right now. How do you expect him to rip that inhibitor off of his head, phase out through an electric fence, and escape? Dr. Windom will kill him with this mad scheme. You and I have to help him."

"I don't know anything of the sort." That was Ben's mother speaking, a woman frantic for her son. "He's strong. He's young. He's accustomed to getting through these sorts of missions. He's strong, and he'll survive."

"But not as strong as me, mother. You know that. You engineered my genes. He might _not_ survive this. And what about Dr. Windom's inhibitor?"

"It doesn't matter, Ben, because I'm not doing it your way. I'm not going to take that explosive device out of you until I have all the equipment and the time that I need." A pause. "I need to go, Ben. Abner is expecting me in the lab right now. Take care of Jesse."

"This isn't finished, Mother."

"No, Ben. It's not."

Jesse heard the door quietly closing behind Dr. Sutter. He heard Ben moving around in the clinic, then felt more than heard the super-soldier standing over him. "Ben?" The name came out as more of a croak than a true word.

But the super-soldier understood. "I'm really sorry about this, Jesse. If I had known what Dr. Windom had in mind, I never would have gone along with it. No matter what the consequences."

"Wha—?"

Ben filled in the blanks. "It's his wife. Dr. Windom's wife. She is—was—a molecular, like you. Only she couldn't maintain her cohesion. Her mutation went too far. Windom thinks he can reconstitute her with an infusion of your cerebral spinal fluid. Windom took the results of Mother's and Dr. Kane's research, added it to his own, and came up with this solution. Only he didn't tell me about needing to have your adrenaline pumping at top speed, or the way he intended to get it. I didn't know that he was going to torture you."

"Explosives…"

"In my gut." The words were bitter. "Windom put it there as insurance. To force both Mother and I to cooperate. Push him too far, and he'll splatter me all over the landscape." Then, "I need it out, Jesse. I need to get that explosive out of my gut, and then Windom will be finished."

_Why does that sound like Ben wants me to do something? I just want to go to sleep. Is that too much to ask? I'm hurting here, dude_.

"Jesse." Ben shook the molecular's shoulder. Jesse blinked, wishing that he hadn't passed out again. _What did I miss?_ "Jesse, listen to me. Wake up."

"'M awake." _Right._ _How 'bout another fairy tale?_

"Jesse, I need you to help me." More shoulder shaking. "Jesse!"

"All right," Jesse grumbled, his voice nothing more than a hoarse whisper. "Whatever. Just make the room stop spinning."

"Man." Jesse could hear the discouragement in Ben's voice. "Damn Windom." Ben gentled his tones. "Sleep now, Jesse. Get strong. But do it fast if you want to live."

* * *

"Stop." Shalimar halted them in the middle of a clearing. The trees ran tall in this part of the estate but there was a dirt road several yards away just beyond a crop of bushes with red berries. "They stopped here. Don't move."

Lexa obediently held Arrigo back, keeping her finger poised to kill. True to his word, Arrigo had sent his men back to the building, keeping them away in terror that the two mutants that held him hostage would go on a killing rampage. It wasn't fear for his people, Lexa thought, but fear for himself. Her opinion of the scientist hit a record low.

It didn't matter at the moment. Right now all that was important was what Shalimar was doing, sniffing around the clearing, carefully moving forward step by step, inhaling the scents that still remained and deciphering what had occurred some twenty four hours previously. It took too long for the feral to finish, but neither mutant was in the mood for a half-assed job. Lexa waited.

"They stopped here," Shalimar finally said. "All of them: Jesse, Ben, Treo, and Mandi."

"And—?"

"They met some people." Shalimar took a deep and angry breath. "They met Dr. Windom."

"Really." That was unexpected. "Why, do you suppose," Lexa asked, "did Big Daddy Windom meet them here? That was not the plan. Dr. Windom was to stay home and mind the store."

"And," Shalimar held the chromatic's eyes, "I found traces of a gun shot. The smell of gunpowder. And blood."

"Jesse's?" Fear clenched at Lexa's heart.

"No. Ben's."

"Not Jesse's?"

"Not a trace. Only Ben's."

"Which is why Ben's arm is in a sling." Lexa was already lost in thought. "Why would Windom shoot Ben, his own man? What happened to Jesse? The three of them—Ben, Treo, and Mandi dearest—all returned to Brennan and I in the clearing where we were supposed to meet, claiming that Jesse had been killed. They deliberately lied to all, even Ben who supposedly is your friend. Why?"

"Windom took Jesse," Shalimar said. "That's the important part. Why? Why would he take Jesse?"

"Does it matter? We're mutants, Shal. Everyone wants a piece of us. Jesse more than most, or don't you remember which one of us has already passed his expiry date?"

"The Dominion?" Arrigo perked up his ears. "The Dominion has a mutant that has passed his expiry date? That would be a mutant worth possessing."

"Don't get your hopes up, slime," Lexa told him, pushed a flare of photons through her finger in warning. "Your own expiry date is fast approaching if we don't find our friend."

"My expiry date? I'm not a mutant—oh," he finished up worriedly, finally catching on. _Geniuses—smart as all get out, but have the common sense of a lentil bean_. "Nevertheless, if your friend has passed his expiry date, the Dominion will be very eager to get hold of him. They've been researching that particular issue for decades."

"Pretty well aware of that," Lexa told him. _Been there, done that, got the bruises to prove it. Jesse's screams as they tortured him in front of me will live in my nightmares forever._

Arrigo's eyes widened. He finally put two and two together. "You're from the bunch that took down the Dominion."

"Tried to," Shalimar said. "We didn't get all the pieces."

Arrigo nodded grimly. "Some of the 'pieces' came to visit me last week, looking for you. I told them I hadn't seen you. They went away." A corner of his mouth quirked upward. "Some pretty impressive hardware they have. Not much good against psionics, yet. Just ferals. And elementals. Chromatics, too. They hinted around about purchasing some of my research. We're talking about a trade."

"Too bad you don't have any of that hardware right now." Lexa kept the man in line, flaring a dainty fingertip. "I'd stay on our good side if I were you."

"I don't have what, or who, you want." Arrigo was starting to regain his confidence. Shalimar's own research demonstrated that Arrigo didn't have the mutant they were searching for. There was no reason for the mutants to kill the scientist. "You can let me go."

"Not yet." Lexa jerked on the man's collar. "Shalimar?"

Shalimar traced the scent to the dirt path and squatted to examine the hard-packed earth. "Vehicles. Tire tracks. They took Jesse away in these. Then Ben, Treo, and Mandi headed toward your rendezvous." She stood up suddenly, searching, going on point. "Lexa! Get down!"

Lexa wasted no time dropping to the leaf-covered forest floor. Shalimar took the opposite tack, leaping straight up onto a tree branch some twenty feet above her.

Bullets careened through both positions. If they hadn't moved right then and there, there would have been two dead mutants. Shouts erupted from the forest edges. Arrigo himself screeched and plunged into the bushes, covering his head with his hands.

Neither mutant had time to waste on their former captive. Lexa spun around, hands flashing, lasers zeroing in on their assailants.

The light flashed into nothingness, absorbed by the black suits that the oncoming troops were wearing.

It took all of a milli-second to recognize them: Dominion soldiers. Dominion soldiers armed with not only bullet-firing guns but other weapons with strange protuberances. Shalimar decided on the spot that she'd rather not find out what those strange-looking weapons could do. That could wait for a better time. "Go!"

"Right behind you." Invisibility was worthless; the goggles that the soldiers wore contained infrared. Likewise, the black suits were impervious to lasers, and any swipe that Shalimar happened to land would be absorbed by the armor. Escape was the only reasonable option.

Lexa took off. With her feral speed, Shalimar could easily outrun the soldiers; could Lexa? _We're gonna find out._ But first: a little defensive move.

_Lasers won't take you down, bastards. How about a falling tree?_

Lexa's fingertip light show chopped through three tree trunks at the speed of light. The massive hunks of wood toppled over, crashing through the underbrush, flattening one soldier and slowing the others.

It bought the ladies just enough time to make their escape. But neither one dared try to repossess their vehicle where they had left it. It was all but certain that the Dominion had left soldiers there, waiting.

Shalimar looked at Lexa. Lexa looked at Shalimar. It was going to be a long walk back to Windom's place.


	9. Roses 9

It was a pleasant dream. Actually, it was more than pleasant. This dream contained the Lexa of Jesse's fantasies, a Lexa who had, just this once, softened around the edges for him and for him alone. No clothes, that perfect backside turned sideways to him with a cascade of raven black hair shimmering down hiding just enough to keep him ecstatically aware of her nakedness. He wanted her, his own body ready to respond and take her gently into his arms. She caressed him, a gentle hand along his cheek, a perfect nail running past his ear, murmuring his name ever so softly…

Wait a minute. Lexa did not speak in a baritone voice.

Jesse's eyes flashed open to be greeted by several things. First and foremost, a blinding headache that made him want to cringe. Second, he was still lying on the hard clinic stretcher in Windom's lab, inside the cage that Windom had stuck together just for him, staring at the instruments of torture that Windom was all too accustomed to using. And third, the baritone voice belonged to Ben. _Crap_.

"Jesse, wake up!" Ben hissed.

The memories crashed back, and Jesse's hands started to shake of their own accord. He sternly commanded them to stop. They refused.

"Don't try to sit up," Ben whispered. "Mother says that will make the headache worse."

"Nothing could make this headache worse. It's already a twelve on a scale of ten." Even talking hurt. "Get me out of here. Where are the others?" Had Windom captured them, too? Jesse struggled to get up. Blackness beckoned, blackness rimmed with knife-edged agony. His moment of strength drained away with miserable swiftness.

Ben caught him, eased him back flat onto the stretcher. Then he removed the inhibitor that Windom had wrapped around Jesse's skull. That in itself was a relief. The headache decreased from twelve to a paltry eleven. "I will, but first you have to help me."

"Why is there always a catch? Catch to save Shalimar with appendicitis, catch to get me out of this hell hole…"

"Jesse, Windom put a packet of explosives inside me. I need you to take it out."

"Find a doctor," Jesse muttered.

"No time." Ben looked around. "Windom will be coming back shortly, and I'll need a few hours to heal or I'll never be able to fool him. Jesse, I need you to reach inside me and take out the explosives."

"What?" Either Jesse was crazy, or Ben was. Hopefully it wasn't both.

"Phase," Ben insisted in a demanding whisper. "Reach inside me and phase it out. Hurry, Jesse! Once you've done that, I can stop Windom."

It was crazy. It was impossible. But, hell—Jesse was a mutant. He had done crazier things every day and twice on Tuesdays. He hurt too much to phase, so of course that was what he needed to do. And Ben had just removed that damn inhibitor of Windom's; Jesse didn't have that excuse to say no and when one is a member of Mutant X, whining aboutexhaustion just didn't cut it. Jesse took a deep breath.

And _phased_.

Just his hand; more wasn't needed and he didn't think he had the strength to do even that much. The molecules of his hand slid effortlessly through the abdominal wall of the super-soldier, casting around for something inorganic, something that didn't belong. Jesse didn't question the sense of what he felt. It wasn't the sense of touch, or smell, or anything so commonplace. There was no word for it; Jesse simply _knew_ the molecular structure of whatever he touched. It was like asking a blood-hound about following a scent trail, a hawk about the air currents that it drifted upon. Jesse was aware of the molecular structure of everything he touched.

There it was, resting below the liver, nestled within the folds of the small intestine. Jesse extended his phasing to the small packet, drawing it out with him, wires dripping with blood.

Too much. His arm snapped back to reality, the explosive packet with him. Jesse dropped the packet to the floor in exhaustion, unable to hang onto the fiendish device. He fell back against the hard stretcher.

"Done!" Ben hissed triumphantly. But—"shit." The super-soldier dropped to his knees beside the stretcher, hand clenched to his waist.

"Ben?"

"I'm…all right," Ben gasped. "Just give me a moment."

Ben didn't sound all right. Ben sounded like a man in mortal agony. Ben sounded like a man who had been gut-shot and was hemorrhaging. Jesse wished he had enough energy to get up and look. _Great._ _My head and his gut. Together we'll make a wonderful corpse._

Ben lifted his head, listening. "Crap! Windom's coming back. I can't let him see me like this." The super-soldier looked swiftly around. There was nothing, no place to hide. Windom had stuffed the place full of equipment. "Stall him, Jesse, for both our sakes! I'll get you out of here, I swear!"

Stall him? Stall Windom? Was Ben out of his mind? Jesse didn't have enough life left in him to lift one arm, and Windom was coming back to torture the rest of that life away, and Ben wanted Jesse to stall him? Passing out again sounded like a very reasonable alternative to this insanity.

Windom entered the clinic, letting the door swing closed behind him. He was alone. His eyes glittered to see Jesse awake. "Mr. Kilmartin. I see that you're ready for me."

_Stall him. How the hell do I do that?_ Jesse could no longer see Ben, but he wasn't about to say that Ben had magically disappeared. Jesse's vision was seriously compromised by the lack of blood flow to his brain, and every photon seeping into his eyeballs was swimming around as if Lexa were up to some weird chromatic trick. _Stall him._ "Go to hell."

Windom chuckled. "Come, come, Mr. Kilmartin. Another session or two, and I'll have what I need. Look, she's already reappearing." Windom caressed the outside of the over-sized fish tank, a lover waiting for the light of his life to reappear. Either it was a figment of Jesse's already tortured imagination, or a psychedelic arm swirled by the glass plate. Jesse wasn't certain which was worse.

Windom looked around. "Where is that boy? They said Sutter was down here. I need him. I need them both." He tapped on an intercom, summoning help. "Find the Sutters. I need them both in the lab. I'm ready to begin."

Dr. Sutter was the first to arrive. She took one look, and her face fell, although she quickly rearranged her features to impassivity. "You said eight hours, Abner. It's only been six."

"And you said that you'd given him narcotics, Bea. You lied." Windom wagged his finger at her. "You can't protect him, Bea. You can't have it both ways. Either this mutant, or your son. I need his spinal fluid to restore my wife, and I will have it with or without your cooperation."

"Don't do this, Abner." Bea Sutter was losing the battle, and they both knew it. "Don't hurt him any more. I'm begging you! This is inhuman! Jesse saved my son's life! Don't make me hurt him!"

"Where is that boy of yours, Bea?" Windom wasn't really speaking to her any longer. He tapped again on his intercom. "I'm not waiting any longer. Three of you, get in here to help me move the mutant." He paused, puzzled. "How did you get the inhibitor off, Mr. Kilmartin?"

_Can I pretend to be unconscious again?_

"I'll have to keep a closer eye on you," Dr. Windom decided. "Put the inhibitor back on him, then get him into the chair. We have work to do."

Jesse let them, not that he had any choice. Windom's men buckled him into the fiendish chair, positioning him so that the needle for withdrawing the sample of his spinal fluid could be easily placed. He tried not to think of what was ahead. Something would happen to stop this. Mutant X would burst in through the door. Ben Sutter hadn't been as bad off as Jesse thought, and the super-soldier, in gratitude for Jesse's pulling the explosive device from his gut, would blast an opening in the wall and stop Abner Windom before Dr. Sutter was forced to insert another harpoon into his back and draw the life out of him.

None of that happened. All Jesse had was Beatrice Sutter.

"No," she said quietly. "Abner, I can't do this. I can't go through this again, listening to Jesse scream. I won't."

"Be careful, Bea. I won't put up with your whining for much longer.Insert the needle into his spinal canal."

"No, Abner." Jesse wished that he could turn his head to look. It sounded as if Beatrice Sutter had straightened herself up. As if she'd grown a backbone. "I can't stop you, but I won't participate in this travesty. You'll have to do it by yourself."

"Fine." Windom waved to his men. "Put her into the cell where I keep Kilmartin. You're so concerned about him, Bea, you can care for him when I'm finished. That should satisfy you; keep him from dying too soon. And you, there: fetch my son. I need his help."

Then it was Jesse's turn. Windom turned to consider the problem. "I need your adrenaline," he mused. "How to get it? How to get it if I cannot stimulate him empathically?" He looked around the clinic, hunting for a solution. His gaze lit upon something outside of Jesse's line of sight, and he brightened. "Yes, of course. The old standby's always work the best. This should produce an excellent quality of adrenaline for harvesting." He turned back to Jesse, his eyes glittering with fervor. "A favorite for interrogation chambers, I'm told. Have you ever stuck your finger in an electrical outlet?"

_No, but I've been on the receiving end of an elemental who I'd really like to see get his butt-kicking ass down here_.

"We'll see if we can get what we need using this." Windom held up a handful of wires, and carefully began tacking electrodes to Jesse's chest. "You, there. Hook this up to the generator over there. The one with the dial; I'll want to keep him at a constant rate of discomfort for optimum results. After all, we can't have him passing out too soon."

_Yes, we can. The sooner, the better. Guys, where are you?_

* * *

Shalimar needed a shower. Lexa needed a shower, too, after jogging the five miles back to the Windom facility. They needed food and water, they needed rest—but even more, they needed answers. And until those answers arrived, neither one was in the mood for anything else. 

There were guards at the gate; those guards sensibly let the pair through without so much as a challenge, recognizing them as guests of the Windoms. Good thing, too, for Lexa would have been happy to torch the guard house around them as soon as one of them opened their mouth to say, "good morning."

They trotted down the main drive to the facility itself, aiming for the main entrance and more than ready to blast the doors wide open at the first sign of resistance. They wanted answers, and they wanted them now: _where was Jesse Kilmartin?_

Lexa reached out to open the door. Shalimar stopped her. "Wait."

"What?"

"Ben."

"Big old, about-to-be-cut-down-to-size Ben?"

"The very one." Shalimar pointed. "Over there. In those trees."

"What's he doing there?" Lexa started to ask before realizing that she really didn't care. What she cared about was burning the answers out of the super-soldier, and she really didn't care about anything else.

"Just remember, we need him alive," Shalimar hissed. "He's as fast as I am, and as powerful. Don't get caught in a bear hug. He's tough."

"Aren't I supposed to be reminding you of that, feral? Take left; I'll circle right."

Ben seemed oblivious to their presence, leaning against a tree and apparently involved in contemplating the universe. Lexa wished that she had Shalimar's powers, that she could anticipate which way the super-soldier was going to jump. For she couldn't imagine that they would catch him unaware. That simply couldn't happen. Ben Sutter was a genetically-engineered soldier with the senses of a feral and the strength of five men. He would be one of the few people alive fast enough to dodge her laser blasts, not because he was faster than light but because he would be able to anticipate Lexa's every move and react even before she summoned the photons to her fingers. He was a very dangerous opponent.

_But so am I_.

Shalimar made the first move. Leaping down from her perch in a tree high above, she whirled into the super-soldier, taking him to the ground. Round one: Shalimar. Both jumped to their feet, but Shalimar was quicker. She whipped out one leg in a vicious back kick that landed center stage, one inch above the belt. Ben folded.

Lexa gaped. Ben, taken out by a single blow? Ben, the super-soldier, gasping for breath from a lying position on the cold forest floor? Ben, heaving up blood and guts—_crap_. The man was seriously hurting.

Shalimar didn't care. "You _reek_ of Jesse's scent!" she hissed. "Where is he?" She grabbed Ben by the shirt, lifting him up off of the ground and slamming into the tree trunk he had just been leaning against. Her golden eyes shot daggers. "Where is he?"

Ben only groaned, not making an effort to defend himself. He wrapped his arms around his belly, in obvious pain.

"Where is he?" Shalimar was ready to shriek.

"Shal, stop. Look at him," Lexa commanded. "Ben, what the hell is going on? Where's Jesse?"

Ben summoned the effort to pull himself together. "Windom's got him. Downstairs, in his special clinic. He's got Mother, too. You have to hurry."

"Got that part right," Lexa muttered dryly. "You?"

A ghost of a smile passed over Ben's lips. "Jesse just saved my hide, too," he admitted, wiping a smear of blood from his lips. He winced. "Shal, I think you just undid the work of the last two hours. Gonna take me a while to be able to stand up. Windom's not gonna like it."

"There are a whole bunch of things that Windom isn't going to like," Lexa told him, "starting with getting Jesse out of there. Get up, Sutter. You're going first."

"Walking isn't such a good idea right now—"

"_Breathing_ won't work too well if you don't get those pole-sized tree trunks moving," Shalimar snarled. "Move."

"Watch out." Two minutes of heaving up blood, and Ben was ready to go, if not especially steady on his feet. That, to Lexa's way of thinking, wasn't a bad thing. A damaged Ben was a super-soldier who was easier to control.

But—"Who did this to you?"

"Jesse." Ben coughed, wiped away another smear of blood.

"Good for him. You beating up on moleculars now? Particularly ones who've saved your life in the past?"

"Lexa, Shal, you've got it all wrong."

"Enlighten me." Lexa gave his arm a twist.

Ben yelped obligingly. "Dammit, Lexa, I'm trying to help the man! Lay off, will you?"

"Enlighten me," Lexa repeated with a little more ice in her tones.

"I think I'd better sit down." Ben gingerly replaced himself onto the ground, arms still wrapped around his belly. The man really did look bad, Lexa had to admit. This was one mutant super-soldier that she'd be able to control with ease. And right now, they needed intel. Assuming that Ben would tell the truth. He spat another wad of blood away. "I need to start at the beginning."

"The short version," Shalimar warned him. "I never did make it through War and Peace."

Ben groaned. "Don't remind me. I have a paper due on Tolstoy next Wednesday."

"Keep dawdling, and you won't have to worry about it. You'll be dead," Lexa observed.

Ben took the hint. "Abner Windom is a mutant himself, an empath."

"Got that. Talked to Arrigo. The whole family is mutant. Got great genes, Windom is a proud papa. Keep going," Lexa told him.

"Right. Windom has always believed in eugenics, breeding for the ultimate perfection of the genome—"

"Perfect man, perfect living through controlled breeding. Hurry it up, before I hurt you again."

Ben winced. "He married a molecular. He was going for the perfect set of genes."

"Didn't get too far," Lexa observed. "Treo and Mandi are not my idea of great kids. Mutant or otherwise. Spoiled brats."

"Don't underestimate them," Ben warned. "You know how difficult it is to beat Jesse in full defensive mode. Treo is just as tough. Water is his specialty, all three phases: water, ice, and steam. Try to hit a fog bank. Try getting slammed by a ten foot icicle. Believe me, you'll know you've been in a fight."

"And Amanda?"

Ben snorted. "What do you think is going on with Brennan right now? She's got him reeled in like a lap dog, and she's not even trying. She's a powerful empath, for all that she can't receive."

Shalimar sniffed, unimpressed. Lexa didn't envy Brennan. The elemental would be a long time in living this one down, no matter how powerful the sixteen year old empath was. _Nothing like a woman scorned_. "Go on."

"Windom kept trying experiments on his wife, trying for the ultimate molecular, whatever that would be. He went a little too far: she dissipated."

"Dissipated?"

"Yes. As in, turned into a cloud of molecules and tried to float away into nothing. Windom just barely managed to get all the particles into a giant tank. I think he grabbed a vacuum of some sort and sucked up all the molecules. He's been searching for a way to get her back into one piece ever since. That was more than five years ago."

"And he thinks that Jesse can do this," Lexa said calmly, keeping her emotions under control. _We need this intel to get Jesse out. Going in blasting will only get him—and us—killed._ "Why doesn't he use Treo? The kid's a molecular, too, and more convenient."

"Both Treo and Mandi are incomplete," Ben answered. "Genetically speaking, both of them are a disappointment to their father. Treo is not a complete molecular. He can only do water; in fact, there was some speculation that he's actually a water elemental. Windom says that the chromosomes don't support the theory, but that kind of stuff is beyond me and Mother only says that it would take too much time for her to review the data to come a conclusion. Mandi is a projecting empath only, like her father. Both can project emotion, but can't receive."

"And Mandi projects a powerful come-hither look," Shalimar mused, her golden eyes slitted. "She projected it right at Brennan."

"It's not under her complete control," Ben offered weakly. "There are ways around it. She can't affect women."

"Not that kind of girl, is she?" Lexa asked dryly. "How fortunate for the rest of us. Does she have her hooks into you, too?"

So help him, Ben blushed. In pain, throwing up blood, lying on the ground confessing his sins to two fellow mutants, and he still managed to redden enough to glow in the dark.

"I'll take that as a bright and shining yes." Lexa heaved a sigh. "Two years of intelligent adulthood, Sutter, and already you've been sucked in by jailbait. Way to go, soldier."

"It wasn't—"

"Jesse," Shalimar reminded him with a shove. Ben grunted, winced. "Layout of the lab. Booby traps."

"It's on the lowest level," Ben replied obediently, "below the rest of the lab floors. Only Windom himself goes there, along with Mother and any additional help he needs. He grabs a body when he needs another hand, and tells them what to do. It's by invitation only."

"And you're invited?"

"Sometimes. Not often. Windom sampled my DNA and determined that I couldn't help him in his quest to restore his wife. He's kept me around as head of Security, while I'm not in school. It's Mother that he uses now, another researcher. Mother has a great deal of expertise with moleculars, especially since she and Dr. Kane came up with the technique that restored my intelligence. Dr. Windom has been using that knowledge. He's made a lot of progress with Mother, or so he says."

"_Your_ level of intelligence is up for debate," Lexa muttered. "You're telling me that you stuck around here because Windom offered you a job with tuition reimbursement? That's all?"

Ben flushed again, this time more shame-facedly. "Not all. We needed a place to hide. The Dominion was after us as well, although lately they've been preoccupied with other issues. Windom gave us protection. It was getting more and more difficult to find a place where I could hide Mother and still allow her research to continue. At first, this seemed ideal."

"At first?" Shalimar pounced on the wording.

"Yeah." Ben sighed. "We'd been here about two months or so, and were talking about leaving. Mother and Dr. Windom weren't getting along too well any longer, and it was affecting my grades. I got my first B plus, in Ancient Celtic Literature, if you can believe it!"

"How appalling," Lexa put in with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

"For a guy who was carrying a 4.0 GPA, it was a wake-up call," Ben told her seriously.

"So what happened?"

"The Dominion happened," Ben said. "They tried to force Dr. Windom to give them his research. He refused, they attacked, we fought back."

"And—?"

Ben winced again. "I took one in the gut. It was a close thing; Windom saved my life. Mother was trapped in one of the upstairs labs. I wouldn't be living today if he hadn't stitched me back together."

"But—?"

"He put in a little insurance." Ben was clearly uncomfortable. "A little explosive device, to be exact. One where he held the trigger. A hold over both Mother's and my heads. It was a real eye-opener for us both."

"So? Your mother's a doctor. Windom put it in, she could take it out."

Ben shook his head. "Dr. Windom kept track of the supplies. Mother needed equipment, scalpels and anesthesia. We kept looking for an opportunity. We hadn't found it yet."

"And now?" Lexa thought she could see where this was going. And she also thought she saw color returning to Ben's face. _Super-soldier boy heals fast. Maybe even faster than a feral. How convenient for the armed forces of the world_.

"Jesse," Ben said grimly. "In order to get him out of there, I need to be in a position where Windom can't blow me up with a flick of a switch." He stared Lexa straight in the face. "Jesse took that device out of my gut. Windom doesn't hold that over me any more."

But Shalimar wasn't about to cut him any slack. "So why is Jesse still there?"

Ben winced, but to Lexa's eyes it didn't look as painful as previously. "Because he accidentally ripped out a chunk of intestine along with the explosives. I barely got myself out of the clinic without Windom catching me. I was about to go back when I got jumped by a couple of mutants with long hair and an attitude."

"So you say," Lexa challenged him.

"So I say." Ben didn't give an inch on this topic. "Believe what you want, Lexa, but Jesse saved my life, back before he ever knew you existed. Without him, I'd still be a drooling idiot asking for a bedtime story with fire engines in it." He held up his hands to show that he wasn't hiding anything, but as he rose it was clear that the mutant power to heal was in full force in the super-soldier. Lexa automatically felt for the photons at her fingertips. Ben was _big!_ "I'm going back now to break him out. I have a debt to pay. Coming with?"

Lexa scowled. Could she trust this big lug? _Dare_ she?

But Shalimar held out her hand to him. "C'mon, Ben. We've got a molecular to rescue."


	10. Roses 10

"Father…" Treo's voice trailed off.

The clinic was as sterile and as cold as ever, despite the numbers of men present: Windom senior torturing his specimen out of Jesse, Treo to help hold the instruments of torture, and three guards assigned to do whatever Windom needed at the moment. At present, their assignment was to watch without throwing up. Jesse took malicious comfort in their distress. They had already done enough by wrapping that damn inhibitor back around his head and by strapping him into this torture device.

"Don't go getting squeamish on me now, boy. Do as you're told." Windom did something to the harpoon in Jesse's back, and Jesse couldn't help but let out a moan. Not that he tried hard to repress it; not since he'd noticed that Treo turned a slightly more putrid shade of green each time he did. There was precious little that Jesse could do, but get Treo upset enough and maybe that would help. _Any port in a storm…_

"Haven't you gotten enough of the specimen?" Treo asked irritably. "Give it to Mother. Maybe it will work."

"Don't tell me what to do, boy. I've been studying this. All you've been doing is playing with your powers, trying to control them. Learn what I know, young man, and then you can have an opinion."

"But he's—"

"The switch, Justin. Turn it on."

"But—"

"I've got my hands full keeping this needle steady. Flip the switch and get it over with!"

Jesse had no voice left to scream. The electricity hit like a tsunami, washing over and through him and pushing away all coherent thought. No breath, no movement, no thought except for the heartfelt begging for it to _stop_!

Then it did. He could feel the tugging at his back, heard Windom murmuring, "steady, steady," to himself, felt Windom's harpoon wiggling in place.

Jesse wanted to say that he relaxed into the restraints, that there was no point in fighting yet. _Yet_. But the real answer was that he had nothing left to fight with. Windom had sapped every iota of energy from him. Jesse felt drenched in sweat, that unconsciousness was a slender thread away.

"Father, he's going out on us."

"Little bit more. Just a little bit more."

Where was Ben? The super-soldier had promised to come back for him. _Little late, Ben, aren't we? Got what you wanted from me, now you've taken off? Maybe the rest of Mutant X has given me up for dead? Is that what you told them? Don't look back?_ Jesse felt a black despair wash over him. Even death wasn't an option, not with Windom pausing every time it felt like Jesse's heart was about to stop.

_Hey, who said that death wasn't an option?_ Jesse felt the very air in the clinic get thick and hard to draw into his lungs. The world wavered on the edge of agony that the rest of him had become. Death was sounding better and better.

Then, all of a sudden, he was looking down at himself. Damn, but that didn't look good. Windom was withdrawing the needle from Jesse's spine—_didn't know they made needles that big. That for a horse?_—and shouting. Treo and a couple of other guard types were taking him down from the restraints. Unbuckling the straps. _Damn, I used to be able to phase through those things, no problem. It's a bitch getting zapped with electricity. Remind me to avoid a certain elemental on his bad days._

Jesse, however, kept looking down at himself from somewhere at the top of the room. The men kept working over him, shouting although the sound was receding from Jesse's consciousness. _Detached from my body? Must be. Feels a hell of a lot better from up here. Careful, you guys, you're going to break a rib. Is this what death feels like? I can live with this. Well, maybe not _live_. The English language was not designed to work with what's happening to me now_.

"He's gone out!" Windom shouted. "Treo, get over here so that I can work on him. Dammit, get those leads on him! I need to see his heart rhythm immediately!"

Jesse watched as the men wrestled his limp and distressingly unresistant body onto a stretcher to more conveniently work. _No rush to get back, guys. More torture? I can wait up here, no problem. Long as I can, I can wait._

_Jesse, you have to go back._

_Emma?_ Jesse couldn't really say that he 'saw' her, but there was no doubt in his mind that his former teammate was next to him, where ever that was. And, strangely enough, it felt right. _I'm glad you're here. I've missed you. -psychic hug- _

Emma smiled. _Jesse, I haven't missed you and the others. I've been watching you all along. You've done good_.

_Don't know about that, Emma. Lost Sanctuary. Lost Adam. Just about lost ourselves. Getting ready to die, and that really doesn't sound like such a bad idea at the moment_.

Emma shook her head. _No, Jesse, you can't. The others need you. You can't come with me. Not yet. There are still things that you need to accomplish, you and Brennan and Shalimar. And Lexa._

_You know about Lexa?_

_Jesse, I've been watching you. All of you. You have to go back and finish what you've started._

_You sure?_

_Very._ _I'm sorry, Jesse._

Heavy sigh. There was a great big 'ouch' in his future. _So am I_.

And he really was, because no matter how bad the torture was, it was nothing compared to the feeling of suffocation. Even worse, because the suffocation really wasn't. Treo, at his father's behest, was holding a mask of oxygen firmly overJesse's face, forcing air into his lungs. Most people would welcome the gas. Jesse felt like it was choking him. He struggled. _Hell of a thing, claustrophobia. You cured a lot of other stuff for me, Adam, why not this? Stupid little normal human thing. Not even mutant_.

"Hold him down. Watch him, make sure that he doesn't phase. Shock him if he does. Justin, keep your hand on the inhibitor switch just in case."

Like _that_ was an option. Phasing took energy and control, neither of which Jesse possessed at the moment. He gave up struggling, let the guards hold him flat on the stretcher. Breathing on his own would have to suffice.

He would have liked to close his eyes, but what Dr. Windom was doing held his interest. _Just what the hell are you doing with the results of my torture?_ The scientist's back was to him, and he made no effort to cover up his actions. A small dollop of _this_ was added to the clear fluid in the syringe, and the mixture turned blue. Then another drip changed it to purple, and Windom was ready.

Windom senior approached the tank of swirling psychedelic mist and inserted the syringe into a convenient port. He worked the plunger, instilling the serum into the interior of the mist.

It had an immediate effect: the mist whirled faster, the colors brighter, until it threatened Jesse with nausea. He closed his eyes, but only for a moment. He had to see what it was that Windom was doing, and if it was working. _Has a definite impact on my future, dude!_

The swirling had slowed. Long strands of matter coalesced into coherency. Jesse ached to be able to touch whatever it was inside the tank. The molecules called to him in a way that only a molecular could understand. Even Treo felt it, Jesse could tell. The water-mutant drifted closer to the tank, his hand outstretched to touch the cold glass.

"Careful, Justin," his father warned. "Not yet. She's not complete yet—damn!" he breathed. "So close! So close! We almost had it!" He looked back at Jesse with such a hungry look that it was almost painful in its intensity. "Another few drops, and we would have had it!" Windom's eyes glittered, calculating, running up and down Jesse's recumbent form. More icicles formed in Jesse's belly, icicles not put there by Treo. "Strap him in. We'll finish this."

"No, Father! You can't!" Treo protested. "Look at him! You'll kill him!"

"That won't matter, boy. We'll have your mother back. That's what's important."

"But what if we don't? What if we need more serum?" Treo cast around desperately. "What if we need constant infusions to keep Mother whole?"

That turned Windom around. It was a concept he hadn't considered. He ran the equations in his head. He thought. "No."

"What?"

"No," Windom repeated. "We will not require constant infusions. That is outside the realms of possibilities, given the research already acquired. We can proceed."

"Father—!"

"I do, however," and Windom rode roughshod over his son's protests, "wish to keep this mutant alive. I will not waste material without cause. We are applying electricity across the chest, and this is undoubtedly affecting his heart. Move the electrodes to his groin. That should keep him alive. You, there," to a guard, "take off his pants. Place the clips where you think they will cause the most discomfort. We'll start again as soon as you have him back in restraints."

_Crap_.

* * *

Ben poured over the computer console in the main Security office. His fingers danced like a pianist with a difficult etude to pound out. "Just another few moments, yes, there, got it," he finished triumphantly. "I've instructed the security computers to locate everyone on the facility. There are forty three guards—hey, did Riley call out sick again? I swear, I'm going to write his ass up and terminate him. The man's a week end drunk, and he's going to shoot one of us one of these days on a Monday morning hangover."

"Yeah, being a supervisor's a bitch," Lexa said. "Where's Jesse? Where's Brennan?"

"Getting to that. I'm not locating Dr. Windom, so that most likely means that he's in his lab where the Security cameras don't go. I'm not finding Mother, and she's probably stuck with him. We'll have to be careful when we break them all out. Where's Treo? I'm not finding him…" Ben's voice trailed off.

"Could he have left the grounds?"

"Possible. Not likely." Ben's fingers flew. "Not in his room. Not in the library. Not in the lounge." He looked up. "Windom may have forced him to help in the lab. Dr. Windom doesn't like many people to be down there, and certainly not people that he can't trust. This is too important for him. Treo hates science, hates the whole concept, but Dr. Windom is convinced that blood is thicker than water. If he couldn't find me, Windom would have his son help out. I think that Treo is downstairs with his father, with Jesse."

"How many guards are down there?" Lexa pulled them back to the heart of the matter.

"Hard to say. Best guess: four, with six more guarding the outside of the entrance to the lab. That many guards, we'll definitely need Brennan to get through. And, guys," Ben's eyes were full of hurt, "these guards are my people. They're only doing the job that Windom hired them to do. If they really knew what Windom was doing—_how _he was doing it—they'd up and quit on the spot. They're not bad people. Most of them, that is." And, "they're _my_ people. Please don't hurt them."

Lexa was reluctantly impressed by the super-soldier's plea. Ben was just as much a mutant as any of them, and had been shoved around by life just as much, maybe more. Yet he still had the conscience to ask for mercy for the men under his command. Not all soldiers were heartless cannon-fodder…

"All right," she said, "we'll try. Where's Brennan? And little Miss Hot To Trot?"

Ben blushed again, and Lexa inwardly cringed. The super-soldier had it bad, and the adolescent empath wasn't even present. How far did the empath's range reach? But Ben again told the security computer to do its thing, and located the pair. "The Great Room. Both of them."

"Can it tell us what they're doing?" Lexa asked waspishly, just to see Ben blush again, and then regretted her hasty words. Shalimar's face hardened. It was her man that the empath had ensnared, and the feral intended to get him back even if she had to tear the man into bits to do it. _Do I feel that way about Jesse? Do I even have it in me to feel that way? Let's not go there. Not right now. Got a job to do. Got a mission. Those goals are safer._ "Never mind. Let's go get Sparky."

"Wait a minute." Ben tapped on the intercom. "Walters? Perry?"

"Yo, boss?"

"Listen, I'm getting a bogie on the north end. Take five men and check it out. It may be nothing, but right now I'm getting a little antsy. Check it out, will ya?"

"Got it, boss. We'll report back in thirty."

Lexa nodded approvingly, but Ben wasn't finished. "Alex? The sensors are going a little hinky to the west. Take a team and check out the sensors, okay? Take Williams with you; he's good at running the sensor checks. Call me back in thirty."

"On it. Report back in thirty."

Shalimar was moving toward a grin. "What about south and east? Those suddenly developing 'problems'?"

"Let's not forget about the roof top," Ben told her. "We've got a secondary heliport up there. By the time I finish assigning my men, I should have two-thirds of 'em elsewhere and out of harm's way. We'll only have the guards below to worry about. Those I can't pull. That would alert Dr. Windom."

"You leave them to us," Lexa said.

"Don't hurt them."

"Try our best," Shalimar assured him. "Let's go."

* * *

It didn't take long to get to the Great Room. The hallways outside the room were carpeted, and the noisiest one of the trio was Lexa, which meant that a pin dropping onto that carpet would have been easier to hear.

But Lexa held them back. "Amanda will know something's up as soon as I enter the room," she whispered, "or don't you remember what happened the last time I tried to extract ol' Sparky?"

Ben nodded. "She's right, Shalimar. We need a distraction." He thought for a moment. "Books. I need my books."

"I'm not really motivated to wait for you to go to your room, Super-Student."

"No, I think I left a text book in there. In the Great Room." Ben flashed a sideways grin at Shalimar. "It's _War and Peace_. I think I need to go in there to look for it."

"I think you need to stay out here," Lexa replied, "or am I mistaken in my belief that she can bowl you over with one come-hither look?"

"Oh, I think I can handle that," Ben said cryptically, and gathered up a half-dozen red roses from the vase sitting on the side table along the hallway. He inhaled the fragrance deeply. "What girl doesn't like flowers?"

"Ones with allergies," Lexa snarled quietly, but Ben had already eased the door open.

He straightened, and walked in, commanding his face to remain impassive as he noted that Brennan's shirt was long gone and the smudge of Pretty in Pink lipstick on his cheek was not. The elemental was lounging on the love seat, his head in Mandi's lap, staring up into her eyes as though there was nothing else in the world to look at. For her part, Mandi caressed his brow, moving stray dark hairs back from his forehead, going for a Mona Lisa smile and succeeding at looking bored.

Ben took another long whiff of the roses, enjoying the fragrance. He grinned, and held them out. "Mandi?"

"Ben?" Mandi was glad to see him: more entertainment. She brightened, dislodging Brennan from her lap. The elemental scowled, but rearranged his face into a pretense of welcome.

"Looking for my books," Ben said, unable to keep the smile on his face from heading toward fatuous. "There it is," he added, picking up the heavy tome from an end table. "I'm not bothering you, am I?"

"Yes," Brennan said.

"Of course not," Mandi beamed.

Ben moved into action. He extended the roses in his hand. "For you, Mandi. I picked them outside." _Right._ _Picked 'em outside in the hallway from the vase_.

Shalimar and Lexa chose that moment to enter, lasers blazing, intent on removing their teammate from his current predicament whether he wanted to be removed or not.

This alarmed Amanda Windom. Alarm activated her empathic gift. _Sudden_ alarm activated her gift _full_ force.

Brennan leaped to his feet, pouring out the electricity. Ben, for his part, dropped both book and flowers and dove head first for Shalimar.

The feral found herself in the fight of her life against a man that she had thought was on her side. _Not doing well picking menfolk, are we, Shal?_ Before this, she would have sworn that only a feral could match another feral for speed and agility. Today she found out that a super-soldier in partial possession of his faculties could also match her, and Ben had a longer reach. And bigger and stronger muscles.

_Wham!_ Shalimar went flying into the heavy velvet drapes, sliding to the thick pile carpet and dragging the afore-mentioned drapes with her. Bright sunlight darted into the room. She jumped up—only to be tripped by the fabric. Ben advanced.

Shalimar rolled out of the way just in time to avoid being pounced upon. One shapely leg flashed out, and Ben took his turn at whacking a hole in the wallpaper with his head.

Lexa went for Brennan, photons versus electrons. Brennan burned a hole in the sofa that Lexa hid behind, so Lexa set the love seat on fire. The fact that Mandi herself was on that love seat had nothing to do with it. The squeal, however, was gratifying to Lexa's ears. _Special bonus, bitch!_ Brennan scowled, and put a little more _oomph_ into the blast that sent the end table with the vase of white roses flying.

Rose petals shredded themselves from their blooms and cascaded down through the air as if over-zealous flower girls at a wedding had been given instructions to rid themselves of the petals as quickly as possible. The aroma of rose attar filled the room.

Lexa sneezed.

The effect on both Brennan and Ben was more pronounced. Ben slid down the wall from where Shalimar had bodily thrown him and sat on his rump, a dismayed look on his face. Brennan's emotional roller-coaster was a little more gratifying to Shalimar: the elemental started with _shock_ as he stared at Amanda Windom, went to _horror_ as he observed the woman that he professed to love watching him with something less than forgiveness, and ended up looking at the ripped up deep pile wishing that he could suddenly acquire his teammate's gifts and sink through the carpet. He gulped. "Shalimar?"

Lexa pulled back from the laser bolt she was about to part Brennan's hair with. "Are you back?"

Brennan swallowed again. And again. "I was gone. Wasn't I?"

"Yes, Brennan, you were." Shalimar folded her arms, declined to offer a hand to help Ben to his feet. The super-soldier wisely stayed where he was, on the floor and out of the fray both physically and verbally.

"I—" Brennan looked around for help. It wasn't forthcoming.

But Lexa hated a mystery. "What the hell just happened?" she demanded. "Ben? Amanda?"

Amanda pouted; no help there. Lexa focused on Ben and snapped her fingers. Little photons like sparks of flame jumped into the air. "Ben?" With a little more bite in her voice.

Ben winced. "Roses."

"I can see that. I think I need a clearer explanation, and I think I need it right now, Sutter."

More wincing. "You'll notice that there are vases filled with roses all over the living quarters," he offered.

"How nice," Shalimar said coldly. "I take it they're not for decoration and gracious living?"

"Nope." Ben winced again. "They're protection."

"Against Amanda."

"Against Amanda," Ben confirmed.

"Doesn't work very well."

"Does, too," Mandi pouted. "Look what happened. The place is a mess, and you upset both Ben and Brennan. This never would have happened if you hadn't barged in."

Shalimar rolled her eyes. "Let's go, Brennan. Unless you'd rather stay here and let Lexa and I rescue Jesse by ourselves?" The icicles dripping from her voice were far colder than anything Treo could hope to produce.

_Grovel, Mulwray. Grovel good. Grovel for as long as it takes_.


	11. Roses 11

The elevator to the corridor leading to Windom's laboratory opened, and Ben strolled out alone. He greeted his men. "Hey, John, Reynolds. Larry, I thought you were on patrol, you and Sam."

All four security guards looked up, their faces breaking out in smiles. "Ben, glad you're here. Windom's been looking for you; couldn't find you before. Wants you inside. Wants your help, or something." One of the men shuddered dramatically. "Wouldn't want your job, boss. There's some nasty shit coming out of that lab."

"Lots of screaming," another confirmed. "It's quieted down now. Hope it's over. I'm gonna be hearing that voice in my nightmares."

Ben nodded somberly. "Yeah, you're right, John. It's nothing you want to get involved in. Mutant stuff. Look, I got it covered, so you four head on upstairs, okay? I sent Walters out on recon, and he hasn't checked back in yet. The four of you head out after him, toward the north forty. I know I'm just jumpy, but…" he let his voice trail off.

"You got it, boss." None of the four wanted to remain down here in the basement listening to the unidentified horror going on behind closed laboratory doors. "We'll check on Walters, no problem." They hustled past the super-soldier and into the open and waiting elevator. The silver doors slid shut with a hiss, a gentle hum following as the lift rose.

Lexa released the three members of Mutant X from her invisibility, and they stepped away from the wall. _Wouldn't do for the guards to accidentally bump into something that didn't look like it was there_. "Not bad, Sutter. You have a flair for this."

"It's in my genes." But the humor was quickly fleeing as Ben concentrated on the entrance. "It's quiet in there. Too quiet," he added. "Guys, my mother is in there." Meaning, _she's just as much a prisoner as Jesse_.

"And she's helping Windom," Lexa returned coolly.

"Not by choice." Ben indicated the almost closed wound under his shirt. "She doesn't know about this."

"Which means, neither does he. Windom still thinks he has a hold over you." Brennan was more than happy to put the best face possible on things that were already too sticky. "How do we take this? What's the layout? Ben?"

"There's a generator far back left," the super-soldier said, ignoring the icicles that Lexa continued to shoot forth. "Take that out, and the power's gone. No matter what, he can't use most of his toys on Jesse, or on us."

"And what, exactly, kind of toys can we look forward to?" Lexa asked.

Ben ticked them off on his fingers. "One, there's an electrified cage that he's been keeping Jesse in while he's not needed. There's a healthy amount of juice running through there, not enough to fry anyone on a permanent basis but enough to make sure that you won't be turning cartwheels for the next ten minutes. He's been keeping Mother in there, now that she's not being quite so cooperative."

"Not a problem." Brennan clicked his fingers. A spark of electricity ran up the miniature Jacob's Ladder. "Remove the generator, and everything hooked up to it goes dead. Next?"

"Windom's got an inhibitor," Ben told them. "It's got its own power supply. Last time I saw it, it was wrapped around Jesse's head."

"Let me guess. One wrong move from us, and he zaps Jesse." _And those puppy-dog eyes will look at me blankly forever._ "What would happen if the remote control was no longer in the picture?"

Ben got his own blank look. "You know, I'm not really sure? I assume that the inhibitor wouldn't work. It won't have any signals fed to it."

"And this will be in Windom's hand?" _And can I laser off that hand at the wrist while I'm destroying that menace to mutant society?_

"That I'm not so sure of," Ben said honestly. "He usually leaves it on a bench somewhere, out of Jesse's reach, just in case. He's usually busy with getting samples for the cure for Mrs. Windom. And he leaves Jesse so wiped that he couldn't use his powers even if he wanted to. The inhibitor is just a fail-safe."

Lexa had heard enough. "All right, that baby's mine. Search and destroy. What else?"

"Guards," Ben said promptly. "Four of my guys are in there. Guys that really don't want to be doing this," he added pointedly. "You can back them into a corner, and they'll happily put down their weapons." He thought for a moment. "I can order them to lay down arms. They'll listen to me, more than Dr. Windom."

"Do that," Shalimar told him. "Any bright ideas, I'll handle them. Anything else?"

Ben looked uncomfortable. "Treo. He got called in to help when they couldn't find me. Took some doing, too. He hates science, and this won't be helping. He's not a bad kid, guys. Just happened to pick the wrong parents."

"His tough luck." Lexa considered. "Which phase of water will he be in?"

"Whichever one suits his purposes," Ben said honestly, "and he can go from one to another in a heartbeat. Guys, I really don't know which way Treo will jump. This is his father, and his mother, but beyond that I think he's really skeeved at what's going on. He's not into torturing fellow mutants."

"Could've fooled me," Brennan grunted. "All right, if he doesn't play nice, I'll work him over."

"Be careful," Shalimar warned. "If he douses you with water—"

"Then I'll move in close and rearrange his face," Brennan replied promptly.

"Think of fighting Jesse, using his full powers," Ben advised worriedly. "Defensively, he's almost unbeatable. If he goes gaseous—"

"I'll turn him into a steam bath," Lexa interrupted. "Next?"

"That's probably all—" Ben said when the intercom on the wall erupted.

"Ben! Boss, we've got bogies in the northwest! And, dude, they're in black rubber suits! We're not touching them with anything we've got!"

Ben swore. "The Dominion! They're back for another round." He looked around for non-existent help. "If I don't go and help my people, the Dominion'll be breathing down our necks down here in minutes. My guys aren't equipped to handle what the Dominion can throw at them. They'll get mown down."

"Go," Lexa ordered. _This way I don't have to worry about which side you're on, super-soldier._ "Keep the Dominion out of here for as long as you can. We'll extract Jesse and move out fast."

"Only fair, since we probably led them here," Shalimar put in.

Ben wasn't satisfied. "My mother—?"

"She'll be as safe as we can keep her," Shalimar told him. "She's not the enemy, Ben." _I hope_.

Ben nodded, accepting the necessity. "Keep in contact. I'll hold the Dominion off as long as I can." He headed for the stairs, eschewing the elevator as too slow. The stairwell door shut quietly behind him.

Time to get the job done. The three of Mutant X looked at each other. "On the count of three," Brennan said, holding up his hand. "One—"

A ragged cry emerged from behind closed doors. None of the team waited for Brennan to get to three. Brennan slammed into the door, flinging it wide open to bang against the wall. He dropped and shoulder-rolled to a kneeling position. He didn't bother to scan the situation; he left that for his teammates. A quick aim, a blast of lightning, and the generator in the far corner went up in a shower of sparks and noise.

It was a good example of teamwork: by dropping to a low position, Brennan cleared the way for Lexa to hurl a little of her own havoc. Her target: the remote for the inhibitor that she saw encircling Jesse's head.

At first she couldn't find it. Windom himself held Jesse's head in his hands, staring deeply into the molecular's eyes and clearly inflicting his own empathic powers onto her teammate. The inhibitor that Ben Sutter had spoken of encircled Jesse's head as a precaution, but the remote? Her gaze shifted to the other occupants of the room: Dr. Sutter was engaged at the hypodermic plunged into Jesse's back. Treo was in the corner of the room, working some controls and trying not to barf. The guards likewise had kept their eyes downcast, and were now grateful to have something different to focus on rather than the tortured mutant in their midst.

Where had Ben said? The bench? There the little bugger was, a small black box that looked like it had been salvaged from a television remote control junk heap, a nasty little oblong that had far too many buttons and knobs for any sane person to figure out how to use.

Lexa couldn't torch the inhibitor itself, not without frying Jesse, but Ben had said that Windom couldn't get the damn thing to work without the control box. Exit one control box. Lexa focused a slender but _very_ hot shaft of laser light, and took out not only the remote control but a substantial portion of the bench that it rested on. Treo huddled back into the corner, turning into an icicle to protect himself from the flying shrapnel.

Windom spared a split second to register what was going on. "No!" he howled. "_Not now!_ Get them!" He turned back to glare into Jesse's brain, wrenching out a cry of agony from the molecular. "Bea! Get the sample! Hurry! So help me, Bea, I'll blow your son to shreds if you don't hurry!" And he meant it.

Dr. Sutter had no choice. She bent over the syringe inserted into Jesse's spinal column, withdrawing the required straw-colored fluid, ignoring the havoc emerging around her. Tears leaked down her cheeks.

The guards likewise saw no choice. They had been instructed to protect Windom from Mutant X at all cost; it was their job, and there was no Ben the Boss to countermand those orders. They advanced. Hesitant, sure, but they advanced.

That was Shalimar's cue. She bounced off the wall, taking delight in smashing a bank of beakers on her way, and sent guard number one into oblivion with a single kick. Mindful of Ben's concerns, she was uncharacteristically gentle with the others, wrenching them quickly and carefully into something resembling sleep. The fourth she didn't have time for. Brennan, having completed his assignment of taking out the generator, traded several blows with the last guard who had the misfortune to actually be competent in martial arts. If Ben had been there, he would have informed Brennan that Svensen also held black belts in three different traditions. For Brennan, it only made the task more enjoyable. After having been held psychic captive by a teen age girl upon whom Brennan couldn't seek revenge, the elemental longed for an opponent worthy of his attention. Svensen went down.

Windom snatched the filled syringe triumphantly from Beatrice Sutter's hand, releasing Jesse from the empathic torture. The molecular slumped in his restraints, spent. But Dr. Windom wasn't finished. "Tell them to back off!" he ordered Dr. Sutter. "Tell them to back off, or I'll activate the bomb inside your son!" He held up a small button. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that that little button would send a signal to the explosive inside Benjamin Sutter.

Except that explosive was no longer inside the super-soldier. Only Ben knew where he'd dumped it, but it wasn't inside the man. But Windom didn't know that. And neither did Dr. Sutter.

Beatrice Sutter: researcher, doctor, scientist—and mother. Above all: _mother_. A mother with a son in danger. There was anguish in her voice, misery in every line of her body, but she snatched up a scalpel and held it to Jesse's throat. "Back off!" she ordered. "Please! Stay away!"

They stopped.

"Put it down," Brennan told her. "There's no longer any threat. Ben is safe."

"They'll say anything to save him," Windom hissed. "I only need a few seconds more!"

"We're not lying," Shalimar said earnestly. The scalpel was only scant millimeters from Jesse's jugular. The molecular seemed unaware of his danger, his eyes closed, his hair plastered to his head in exhaustion. "Ben got the explosives out. I saw the wound myself."

"Don't trust them!" Windom added something to the syringe. "Listen to me, Bea! Don't trust them! I'll blow your son up!"

Dr. Sutter looked from one to the other. "Please stay back!" she pleaded. "Give him another moment! It will all be over then. You can have Jesse back."

"Dr. Sutter—" Lexa started, when a croak interrupted her.

"Dr. Sutter." Jesse couldn't look around to stare her in the eye, not with being buckled into Windom's fiendish contraption. "Dr. Sutter, your son is safe. I took the explosives out of him myself."

Dr. Sutter froze. Frightened. Not knowing what to think. The wrong choice would cost the life of a man, and that man might either be her son, or the mutant at whose throat she held a sharp blade.

"He's lying, Bea." Windom continued to work, continued to prepare the solution to restore his wife. He only needed a few seconds longer. "I held him captive. He couldn't have done it. He's lying."

Jesse coughed, trying to clear a throat made hoarse by screaming. "There's blood under my fingernails from where I reached in to grab it. Look at my hands, Dr. Sutter."

Dr. Sutter looked. "The fingernails; they're brown. Old blood."

"Dirt," Windom insisted. "Justin, take the scalpel from her. Help Dr. Sutter." Meaning, _I'm losing this argument, son. I need more time!_

"Stay where you are, Treo." Lexa's voice was full of lethality. "Dr. Sutter, put the scalpel down." But didn't add: _before I burn it from your hand_. Even though the others knew and feared the possibility.

"Call him," Shalimar added. "Call Ben. Ask him."

But the facility intercom interrupted them. Ben's own voice crackled over the speaker. "Mayday! Mayday! The Dominion has broken through the northwest entrance! We're falling back!"

"Ben?" Dr. Sutter turned, alarm in her face. The edge of the scalpel hovered a scant hair from Jesse's throat.

It was enough. The feral flashed in, snatching the blade from the doctor's hand. Brennan, right behind, hauled Dr. Sutter back and out of harm's way. The older woman squealed in surprise and shock.

But the shock was Justin 'Treo' Windom. Not happy, but, just as Ben was Dr. Sutter's son, Treo's mother was living as a collection of disparate molecules in an over-sized fish tank. A mother who was about to be restored to life with one single additional dose of what was in the syringe in Dr. Windom's hand.

The water molecular darted forward to take Jesse's head in his hands. "Stop!" he yelled, as much fear in his voice as they had ever heard. Treo's hands shook, but he kept them at Jesse's temples. "Stop, or I'll kill him!"

"He can do it," Dr. Sutter warned, still held captive in Brennan's grasp. "He can turn the water inside every cell to ice. All the cells will freeze and burst. Jesse will be killed instantly."

Mutant X stopped. The photons died away in Lexa's hands.

Dr. Windom finished his preparations. Advancing on the tank, he inserted the syringe and depressed the plunger, pushing the contents into the psychedelic swirling inside.

The swirling took notice. The colors began to coalesce, began to take shape. An arm appeared, then a shapely leg flashed by the glass barrier. A glimpse of a face, quickly replaced by a hand pushing away from the glass.

"It's working," Windom said in a hushed voice, awed. "It's working! Katherine, are you there?"

"Mom?" Treo too took a step forward. And, incidentally, a step away from Jesse.

A stunning woman emerged from the tank, dripping wet—and naked. Mutant X had expected any wife of Abner Windom to be his own age, old enough to have given birth to Treo and Amanda. But this woman looked little older than Lexa, and in almost as good shape. Living inside a tank as a few million disassociated molecules had clearly agreed with her.

She was naked—and furious. She snatched a stray towel from behind Abner Windom, holding it to herself, water dripping from long strawberry blonde hair. "Abner Franklin Windom, you are an absolute ass!"

_Oops_.

"Did you ever think to ask me if this was what _I_ wanted?" The woman continued. "Did you ever think that perhaps _this_ was the next stage in evolution for a molecular? That being part of the world, touching every possible molecule on earth, would be what I wanted?"

"But, Katherine—"

"Don't 'but, Katherine' me! You have always taken what you wanted, no matter what the consequences!" The woman shook a dripping finger at Dr. Windom, water droplets flying. "This was _my_ experiment! And you ruined it! You cooped me up in that tank for _years_, Abner!"

"Katherine—"

"I could have taught Justin how to do this, once I learned the technique of going and coming into a plasma state. Did you ever think of _that_, Abner?"

"Katherine—"

"You are _impossible!_" the woman shrieked. And then she slapped him.

Dr. Abner Windom saw stars. He staggered back against the bank of computers. The little button that controlled the explosives that had formerly been inside Ben Sutter went flying.

Normally, that would be a good thing: the controls no longer within Dr. Windom's grasp. But the button slammed against the wall, depressing the controls that set off the explosives.

Even that shouldn't have been a bad thing. The explosives weren't inside Ben Sutter any longer, even though Dr. Sutter, not certain of that, screamed in horror.

The noise of the scream was lost in the explosion, and all occupants of Dr. Windom's lab learned where Ben had placed the explosives in his hurry to escape the lab: underneath the tank. The quantity of explosive material wasn't extensive, but the effects were. As real estates agents were wont to say: _location, location, location!_

The shrapnel of the generator was a mere prelude to what was produced by the over-sized glass tank as it blew up. Treo instantly converted to ice to protect his mother. He couldn't reach his father, nor Mutant X. They ducked, Brennan taking Dr. Sutter to the floor and the girls covering their injured teammate. The din was incredible, with the sound of the explosives being overtaken by the shattering of the tank and the crash of the glass against anything and everything inside the lab.

The silence following was equally deafening.

Lexa straightened up, Shalimar easing herself away from Jesse. The molecular groaned, his head flopping back. The pair instantly went to work on the buckles restraining him, Lexa flinging the remnants of the inhibitor to the glass-covered corner of the room. Brennan too pulled himself to a standing position, Dr. Sutter uttering a grunt of dismay at the slice a sharp piece of glass had left in his leg. Brennan winced, the smile more for show than for reality. "Care to make a habit of patching up Mutant X, doc?"

"Not by choice," she replied wryly.

"Mom?" Treo asked, reverting back into his usual state of matter.

"I'm all right, dear," Katherine Windom said, adjusting the towel around herself, reaching up to straighten her hair only to realize that that would entail detaching the hand restraining the towel in place. "My, you've grown so tall during this time. How long has it been?" She chose to abandon the hair. Then: "_Abner!_"

The main casualty of the explosion was Abner Windom himself. Victim of his own explosives. A shard of glass had pierced his heart.

But—

"Talk to me, guys," came nervously over the intercom. "What's going on? What was that noise?"

"We're cool down here," Brennan called out, and, looking around, added, "mostly."

"Clean it up quick," Ben advised. "The Dominion is through the gates. We got our asses whupped, and my guys are sitting on the ground with fingers laced behind their heads. I'm heading back toward you right now. The boys in black are conducting an in depth search of the premises, and I do mean _in depth_. ETA your location in less than ten minutes. Better boogie, dudes and dud-esses. They are looking for _you_, and they mean business!"


	12. Roses 12

Katherine's hair was still not put up, and the towel was all that saved her from indecency. As the team from the Dominion entered the clinic with Ben and Amanda, Dr. Sutter removed her lab coat and offered it to the woman who was her equal in years if not in appearance, and Katherine Windom gratefully accepted the cover up. Ben gaped at the scene, his face going pale and then automatically looking to his mother, to reassure himself that she was still intact. Amanda, upon seeing her dead father, uttered a cry of despair and ran to her suddenly in-the-flesh mother, Katherine Windom.

There was blood everywhere, most of it appearing to belong to the corpse lying on the ground. Treo stood close to his mother and sister, supportive of the fact that his mother had been 'saved' only to become a widow within seconds of her salvation. Katherine sniffed, accepting a tissue to blow her nose, drawing her tearful daughter to her. She glared at the men from the Dominion who intruded on this hour of grief.

They ignored all three and Dr. Sutter, and ignored the dazed guards who only now were waking up. Their detectors were all that the Dominion soldiers needed; they scanned the area.

The lead man looked up. "Where are they?"

"They ran off," Dr. Sutter said bitterly. No one needed to ask who 'they' were. "They pulled their man out, and they ran off. They're gone. You might be able to catch up with them," she added sarcastically, "if you're fast enough."

The Dominion soldier shook his head and pointed to his detector. "My readings say that they're still here. I'm getting molecular readings. Where is he? The molecular? Where is Jesse Kilmartin?"

"Of course you're getting molecular readings," Dr. Sutter said, barely able to contain her exasperation. She motioned to Katherine and Treo Windom. "Both of these two are moleculars. Want a demonstration? Want to waste more time, while Mutant X gets away after destroying my lab and killing my colleague?" She gestured at the devastation around her, careful not to move from her spot for fear of stepping on something sharp and artery-puncturing. "Or maybe you're afraid to get any closer to those mutants. Didn't I hear that it took only the four of them to take down your bosses? I'd be afraid, too, if I were you."

The Dominion soldier's eyes smoldered, but he was too well trained to let his emotions get the better of him. He put away his detector, and motioned for the rest of his team to pack it away. "I'll leave you to the clean up," he almost taunted, meaning _that's all you're good for. Leftovers._ It was the best he could offer, under the circumstances. He shepherded his men out of the lab, urging them to move more quickly after Mutant X.

Ben waited until they were out of earshot, then looked around. "Where are they? Did they escape?"

A _whoosh_ was his answer: four bedraggled and bloodied mutants staggered out of the computer banks and re-materialized into solidarity. Jesse staggered, gasping for breath, and Ben caught him before he could collapse to the glass-littered floor. Brennan too tilted, ready to slide down the wall, hand clutched to the gaping wound in his thigh. Shalimar was all that kept him from receiving another gash from the shattered glass that turned the clinic into a high tech mine field as she manuevered the elemental safely onto a bench free of miniature daggers.

"Quickly, to the stretcher," Dr. Sutter commanded, grabbing her stethoscope. "Oxygen, now."

Treo helped Ben wrestle the limp molecular to the stretcher, Lexa holding the oxygen mask to Jesse's face until he finally slowed his frantic inhalations, catching his breath. "That was close," Lexa murmured. "How long? Three minutes?"

"I thought you were going to lose it," Shalimar said to Jesse. "They would have had us."

"We're still not out of the woods yet," Ben warned. "When they don't find you, they'll be back. They'll be watching the grounds."

But Lexa got a faraway look in her eye. "Let 'em watch," she said.

"Lexa, they have heat sensors. Your invisibility won't help."

"Not what I had in mind." The faraway look turned into a malicious glint. "I think we're owed a certain something by the Windom family. You wanted Mutant X's help in restoring your mother? Let me talk to you about the price for our help…"

* * *

The Dominion soldiers looked up. "There it is. They're trying to get away."

The chopper was already some hundred feet in the air and rising rapidly. The leader of the Dominion team aimed his detector at the helicopter, adjusting it for the extreme distance. "Molecular aboard. It's them, people. Look alive."

"EMP missile ready. We can take it down whenever we want. It'll kill the power, not blow up the chopper. They'll have to land, and it'll be a rough one."

"Do it quickly," the leader ordered. "We want Kilmartin in one piece, for testing. Too high up, and the drop will kill him. Fire."

The missile launched, its 'smart' brain heading it unerringly for the still lifting chopper. The pilot saw the danger, tried to shift away, but the missile changed course to intercept. The missile blossomed into an electro-magnetic pulse, just the thing to knock out the electrical systems and wipe out the power keeping the rotors a whirling blur. Just the thing to put a chopper back on the ground where the Dominion could pick up the dazed mutants with little or no trouble.

Except _this_ chopper exploded. Fireworks filled the air. Flaming particles rained down over the wooded countryside.

"What?" the leader exclaimed. "What happened?"

The man who had launched the missile blanched. "That shouldn't have happened. The missile couldn't do that."

"Well, it did! Did you use the right one? Let's get over there, see if there's anyone still alive after that. Idiots," he muttered under his breath, hoping that he wouldn't be blamed for this fiasco by his superiors back at base. _The Dominion needs that Kilmartin freak and they wanted him alive_. _Maybe they'll be satisfied with some fresh pieces._

No one noticed the small cloud that detached itself from the helicopter's previous skyward position and drifted back toward the Windom facility.

* * *

Ben helped Brennan get into the passenger side of the SUV, a gift from a grateful Windom family that had come to see them off. Brennan grunted as he sat down, the deep slice in his thigh slowing him down more than a little. Shalimar, in the driver's seat, settled him on one side while Ben tucked the crutches in beside him. Brennan, on his part, grabbed his leg to a) position it properly and b) reduce the pain while doing so as much as possible and regretting that not much was possible. Shalimar helped him to buckle himself in, pulling the strap tight across his waist. Brennan yelped.

"Oh, sorry," Shalimar cooed. "Did I hurt you?"

Brennan bit his lip and remembered the last time he was sitting next to a girl. That girl hadn't been Shalimar, and he regretted it immensely. "Not at all," he lied, working to get the words out through the waning agony shooting through his leg. He clutched onto the door handle, white-knuckled, wishing that he could somehow transfer all the hurt into the uncaring plastic of the armrest. "I appreciate everything that you do for me. _Everything_," he added. The last word held a _lot_ of sincerity.

"I'm sure that you do. And I'm sure that you will in the future as well. A _very_ long time in the future."

Jesse was already in place in the back seat of the SUV, lying flat with his head pillowed on Lexa's lap, letting the chromatic get away with thinking that he was too far gone on pain-killers to notice her stroking his forehead, trying to caress away his headache. But what really hurt, Jesse reflected, was that he'd been dreaming about being in this very position for several months now. The reality was not living up to the fantasy. Feeling like the least little movement would make him grab for the basin on the floor of the SUV was not part of the dream. Having a bunch of other people around and the Dominion on their tail was also not part of the dream. He must have groaned, thinking about it, because Lexa responded by smoothing back the hair on his forehead. Jesse opened his eyes, met hers in gratitude, then closed them and concentrated on breathing. And not throwing up.

Dr. Sutter leaned in through the window, handing a small vial of pills to Lexa. "One of those four times daily, for each of them," she directed. "I'd rather you kept them here for a few days. Brennan's leg could get infected too easily, and let's face it: my late colleague was less than gentle with Jesse."

Lexa shook her head. "The Dominion is not going to go away. That trick with Treo and the chopper will keep them occupied for about thirty minutes until they realize that no one blew up with the chopper."

"Hey, _I_ blew up with that chopper." Treo materialized from fog into human some five feet away, sauntering over and giving his mother a peck on the cheek. "Can I help it if I can reconstitute myself?"

"Fruit juice concentrate gets reconstituted," Shalimar told him facetiously.

"You calling me a fruit?"

"If the shoe fits…"

"Ah, the mixed metaphor," Ben inserted. "English Lit 205." He turned serious. "Are you sure that you won't stay? Some of you have some serious healing time ahead. Where will you go?"

"I know a place a few hours from here," Lexa said, being deliberately vague. Ben nodded approvingly; what the Windom and Sutter families didn't know, they couldn't divulge. "Those men will be back, and next time they'll want to tear the place down. They won't be satisfied with quick explanations or a quick search. We need to be gone. For everyone's sake."

Dr. Sutter, as the medical personnel on the scene, wasn't happy but she'd lived on the run herself for the past two decades. She understood. "I'm still worried about both of them. Listen, I'll plan to take a stroll around town every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Just in case someone needs to kidnap me, and use me to treat a wanted criminal who's sick."

"Couldn't possibly let you go into town, Mother, without an escort. You know how dangerous it is; mutant types all around just waiting to cause chaos and havoc. I'll bring my backpack with me, filled with books so that I can study while you're shopping. Books, and medicines, and syringes, and bandages…" Ben grinned, but the worried look didn't leave his eyes as he scanned Mutant X. "Which reminds me; you guys need to escape fast, before the Dominion wises up and comes back, and I have a date with a term paper. And others," he added, looking down at the sixteen year old empath on his arm. Amanda dimpled shyly. Mrs. Windom beamed. Obviously she approved of the interest that Ben was taking in her empathic daughter.

"Roses," Lexa instructed. "Where are they? You need a whiff, Sutter."

"Well, actually, no, I don't," Ben replied sheepishly. "Mother has a special aftershave with rose attar as the main ingredient that she makes for me. I'm wearing it right now, although usually I don't bother. Sniff." He extended his chin.

"What? You immune to empathic charms? You don't look it to me, Mountain Man. Right now you look thoroughly besotted."

"It's because what Ben's getting doesn't wear off with roses," Treo put in, smirking. "Let's just say that in another couple of years, when Amanda turns legal, I'll be acquiring a brother-in-law." He leaned against a tree. "Not bad for a day's work. I get to be CEO, I appoint Dr. Sutter as chief researcher, and keep Ben on as head of security. I can live with that."

Katherine Windom fixed her son with a steely gaze. "_Who_ gets to be CEO, Justin Trelayne Windom?"

"Um… You do, Mom?"


End file.
